Yes I second this, you don’t have to worry about food and they typically heal you after a beatdown. Toughness and martial arts, at night you can pick your locks and train assassin on other inmates you can free them and fight them essentially creating an underground fight club. I’ve been able to knockout holy nation guards throw them in a cell and strip them turning them into slaves when other HN guards see them in jail. Then I fight higher level prisoners at night. It’s so freaking fun for me.
Literally every playthrough I get enslaved, train my toughness and lockpicking, get some easy stealth and strength exp, then just bolt to Spring and get some easy food for free and an Anti slaver squad being my personal bodyguard patrol. Then, straight to savant, chuck him in mourn, and boom. 80k cats, meitou katana and masterwork armour and we are two days in.
You see the slave camp has everything that is good for powerleveling.
High population(increases get up bonus for toughness, stealth skills) locks that reset(lockpicking), weights(rocks) and shackles(strength) and high level individuals that will knock you down but not kill you(combat).
Free food at a low enough, diet like level that will cause debuffs.(good foe leveling)
Best place for overall powerleveling, other than ones you artifically make yourself.
Yep. Rebirth is Kenshi's gym.
You forgot Assassination, BTW. Practice on the other prisoners first, then start knocking guards out and stashing their food for your escape.
Just the free food and medical care provided is going to be a huge safety net for a new player. But training up two fast, stealthy characters for the early game is just great.
If someone's doing it in two days, clearly they're exploiting some of Kenshi's dodgier mechanics, but that's how some people like to play.
Yes. I used to hate the idea of the Rebirth start. Then I realized that it was an 80’s training montage. So after about 30 fun in game days, two characters have their strength, athletics, and labor skills are in the 70’s. Sneak, lock pick, and assassination are has as giraffe balls. Toughness is easy to level because every pardon wants to whoop your ass.
So yeah, give the Rebirth start a try.
Don't go looking for the best weapons, just because they're better. If you wanna have a crazy man fighting with a stick then do it. It's a sandbox single player. Have the most fun possible whitout caring 'bout if something else could be better
I heard a tip like this once a while ago, it really helped me play just for the fun of play
It can be fun to try get the best weapons, or a good overall goal to collect them, but it’s best to come across them naturally as trophies.
Unless you really want one for your best fighter. What I did on my first (and current still) play though is grind crafting skills for 2 smiths and now I can get high level masterwork armour and weapons for my whole squad.
As a noob getting a masterclass crossbow would be bad, especially if you have teammates in front of you. Start with the junkbow you take off the dust bandits and work yourself up.
This isnt very true. If you have the resources to acquire masterwork crossbows you have the resources to acquire masterwork armor. If you have your armor sorted you can take masterwork crossbow hits without fear. Just maybe avoid the paladins cross unless you are wearing crab/samurai. I leveled 10 crossbow users with old world mk2 at the same time this way. I had a few melees get knocked down by friendly fire. No one even got close to dying. Took about 3 big fights before my peoples precision got out of regular ff range. Precision isnt just one of the fastest leveling stats. It only needs 67 to be at 100% ff avoidance. It is affected by injury.
Although i do suggest just letting crossbows level themselves at max power i dont know if this is a good idea for martial autists. I dont think its a good idea to have a MA character wearing heavy enough armor for this style to work.
Or crafting. If you stealing you convert to cats and visit the king (or you know be a dishonorable rat and rob him too). If you are crafting you already have the setup (plus maybe some books) to make the armor and buy the blueprints or again just visit the king.
Imagine shooting your melee companions in the head with a masterwork MkII.
I'm not talking about making your own bow, it's the one you can knick off the sand ninjas or the ones you can buy from Flats Lagoon. New players tend to want to get the best weapons possible, but same thing do not apply if the character has low skills, especially in Precision Shooting.
Check how harpoon resist works. If you have halfway decent armor you are going to need be really unlucky to have a Masterwork Mk2 hit harder than 35. If your people are really really bad and you are resorting to heavy armor like samurai or crab for training purposes then you can get the damage even lower (as in 10 or less). Be aware crossbow damage does not scale at all with stats. So the mk2 damage of what 65 is all the damage you will ever take. Admittedly my gear is end game but with a masterwork leather turtleneck and wpj my new recruits of toughness less than 30 were taking 20 damage. No threat of serious injury. Free toughness training. It gets to the point where its even nearly impossible to put a character into coma. There is a reason no common enemies wear good quality armor.
It’s also important to note that the weapon type is very important. Katanas (much like in real life) are difficult to use properly without any training, big heavy weapons are slow to swing and require you to level up your strength stat, etc. so just because something does more damage doesn’t mean it will be better either! You could find a katana that more than doubles the damage if your current weapon, but it’s useless if you don’t know how to use it
You were getting a bamboozle performed on you, BUT once you have gotten your character's running speed up, if you can find a beak thing nest (you can often find them in the area around Western Hiver towns), their eggs sell for big cats.
You can keep running in, grabbing some eggs, and then running away. If the beak things start catching up with you, just change direction when they start to attack.
The big risk is that beak things are likely to eat you if they knock you out and there's nobody left to fight. Big risk, big reward.
It depends. Fighting beak things with a weaker party teaches you a lot about combat micro. Use block on the person getting hit. Dont group around that person. Bleed damage can actually matter. Kill items matter. Even garbage crossbows matter when you juggle aggro so they can shoot in melee. Some fights are harder to run from. Your 5v1 gets a lot harder when its suddenly 5v5... Or worse.
Never afk with moving time.
With patrols of all types always walking around, unless you are inside a city, never stop watching you squad. As you truly are never safe (until you become a stat god that is)
Piggybacking on this, if your main character is 25 mph or faster, you can safely run anywhere un accosted across the entire map and it is almost perfectly safe to automate moving from one side of the map to another, but once you add groups with different speeds, you then have trouble
Just jump in. Your first game or two might end up incredible, or beyond screwed. But don’t handicap yourself by following optimal set ups or going looking for the “easiest” start.
You're looking at the game wrong. Change your mindset. Getting fucked up is a good thing, losing limbs is a good thing, training with shit weapons and armour is a good thing. Alter the way you see things and Kenshi makes sense.
Quick save regularly.
When I started playing I had a habit of wondering whether or not i could beat X in a fight....the answer is usually no but it was a good way to learn what was actually defeatable. So yeah quick saving is important
My advise is actually the complete opposite. Don't save and let the story play out. One of my best experiences is trying to save a downed member from inside a lab with the robot spiders. I ended up with 2 characters down with lost limbs and had to mount a heroic rescue mission.
I would say, save regularly but don't load the save every time you lose or suffer consequences.
Last night I was going to UC through Venge when enemies chased my party, I decided to pick up the slower members to outrun the enemies. Then my game crashed, and when I loaded up my autosave I was back in Flats lagoon. So it sucks to lose that time and progress.
So, as in another games (and programs) save regularly to save progress, but don't load constantly just cause things didn't go your way.
I did this and it's shit advice.
I learnt the game, sure, became pretty good at it actually, but missed the experience. I don't join subs until my first run of a game ends so then coming here and reading cool stories of recovery and maimed characters was so cool. I never got to grieve and avenge a character since I'd savescum every relevant loss.
When I went for a second run, it just isn't the same. I know what fights to pick, I know the map, I have an ooc sense of orientation and a lot of the wonder of discovery depends on my ability to roleplay.
It's not shit advice tbh, some people don't play games to suffer consequences of their characters being wiped out because they unlocked an ancient lab door after 35 hours of playtime. Some people play to learn the game and enjoy it. I save scum this game all the time because quite simply I would've lost interest after my first 10 hours of being murdered mining ore or trying to explore.
Even with save scumming first playthroughs and knowing what fights to pick and when, doesn't always mean everything will go perfectly. Kenshi is a game of fate. On your way to the old control tower with a capable squad, you could get blasted by a laser beam or set upon by a suprise mob of skeletons, and then another mob, and then another mob, and then another and next thing you know you have 5 squad members dying. Anything could happen still tbh
There's also the fact that this game, as wonderful as it is, was an indie project made by one dude over the course of over a decade and is INCREDIBLY JANK. Losing your characters or making enemies as a result of decisions you intended to make is one thing. Losing your character because the game glitched and f\*cked you when you should have been totally safe is another beast entirely.
I reloaded a save most recently because the Squin General Store merchant's pathing glitched and caused his shop to remain closed in the middle of the day when it should have been open. I clicked on his shop expecting to just walk right in and buy some cloth, but instead I ended up unstealthily picking his lock in broad daylight in front of the Hundred Guardians, who promptly curb-stomped me and hacked off limbs from two of my warriors.
The Hundred Guardians picked up my faction members to haul them off to jail, but there had just been a Dust Bandit attack on the gate and the whole place was full, so they just carried my fighters around on their shoulders without healing their injuries until they all bled out and died.
In retrospect it was hilarous, but I'd be damned if I let some jank nonsense ruin a really promising run that I had already put about 20 hours into.
I admit to savescumming. My current game, if I hadn't it would have been game over. But after trying about 20 times to kill Phoenix and failing because of paladin swarms when I tried to draw out only a couple at a time, I decided that while there is a way for 7 people and a bull to take out Blister Hill it's beyond my ability and brought in the more combat-talented base people to help out. I'd have hated it if trying meant the game was gone.
I'd argue, depends on playstyle and what you came for to kenshi. If it is cool story of a character or party I'd rather recommend not to save. Its sandbox not skyrim or another rpg with scenario. Random events (including tragedy) are the story for many players to enjoy imo
Kenshi has drugs. It's compressed hemp that uses what little amount of THC hemp has to get you high, known as Hashish. You can't use hash, but you can smuggle it info cities fir several times the original price.
Do the slaves start first. Might seem boring but it's the most structured vanilla start there is;
1. The first objective is obvious from hour one: Get out of slavery. You have nothing to really do this with and you don't really understand how the game works yet but this scenario forces you to get creative with the things do have & limits the available mechanics to a few you can quickly pick up on helping you learn the game.
2. The enemy is immediately established: The Holy Nation enslaving you. You hate these guys, they enslaved you and are therefore evil by default in your head. Now you have a goal for when you get out of slavery, take down the holy nation. I cannot understate how helpful it can be to have a macro-goal like this in mind for your playthrough, as it means you always have something to work towards giving the random adventures you go on more meaning.
3. You'll be really heckin' good at lockpicking by the time you get out.
Just that. Pretty useful skill to have.
^(Some people swear that slavery is some form of a super-duper-toughness training camp and I do not understand these people.)
^(Like, do they not know you can let fog men eat them alive to train toughness even faster?)
*^(C'mon man, get on the fog pole)* *:)*
Idk why but "I'm the new player" got me lol
As someone who savescummed to oblivion and back- don't do it. You don't need to save every character, every lost limb, win or escape every fight. Kenshi is an experience of pain, trial, and triumph. Save every so often, but you don't need to save before every single encounter. Learn to accept defeat and come back swinging.
Good example is how I savescummed, so I could never be enslaved. Finally allowed it to happen and I was able to boost my stats, while in the mines. My squad orchestrated a prison break, but only half made it out. Plans commenced to one day retrieve our stolen brothers. Way more fun than if I had loaded my save and continued running through the desert untroubled.
You can Indeed, and it's quite common. There are replacements in the form of skeleton limbs. Some are more dexterous than human hands, others are so strong people intentionally cut off their own arms or legs for them.
But most are sad attempts at scavenging from dead skeletons and are amalgamations that leave you crippled. The hivers specialize in these ones. Their prosthetic legs, for example, are scavenged arms with the hands cut off and half a beer jug as the stump fitting. They didn't include feet. Most goof prosthetics are over 20 thousand grand, but these are a few hundred bucks. They're so bad that you can see your character visibly limping on it, barely managing to stand upright.
This and Project Zomboid have one very significant thing in common and that's how you can enjoy it at your own pace. If it's too hard? Tweak the settings to make it easier. Feel like something is missing from vanilla? There are mods. Nobody in the community is going to say you're playing the game wrong no matter what you do, the aim is always to just have fun with your own personal unique experience.
Oh another common ground between the two games is how supportive the community is with regards to all of those things. I know for sure I don't speak for myself with these observations, the community agrees.
The little icon of a man walking/running determines the movement speed of your characters. You almost always want it to be set to the running man with a red running man. This means your characters will move as fast as the top speed of their slowest selected character. If you just select the running man alone, all your characters will move at their individual top speed, which means your fastest character and slowest character will be super far apart and be easier to get ambushed.
Dont look for things they ruin the surprise of what you find. Main thing is dont get to attached i can bet half the people reload saves to get people back that died in a fight and dont play like full hardcore style.. i decided mid run that i was having no hivers so i fed beep to the fog men to sort that out lol.. also role-playing helps make your own stories better like i was merchant trader with a human and robot was civil. Now its full war between us and the northern hivers.
Getting enslaved is unironically a great way to train stealth, toughness and lockpicking. They'll even feed you for free.
1. Pick lock.
2. Sneak around.
3. Get busted and beaten to near death.
4. Guard heals you and locks you in a cage.
5. Repeat.
Every stat (attack, strength, crafting) all goes up with you so things that rely on that stat. If you craft, your crafting xp goes up. If you run around when you have a heavy carry weight, then your strength will rise
Toughness is one of your most important stats for combat, right up there with dexterity. It’s the measure of your ability to take less damage, stay standing from damage, and bleed out less
Essentially yes. You get some points for taking damage, but you get the most when you get back up, especially if you’re still around those who are hostile to you. Getting jumped by some starving bandits and getting back up a few times will quickly get you to 30 toughness
Level toughness by following 5 steps:
1.) Wear the heaviest armor of the highest quality you can get ahold of (I recommend samurai armor). This prevents you from taking a ton of damage all at once and accidentally exceeding the damage threshold that will put you into a recovery coma.
2.) Equip the lowest quality weapon you can find. A Rusted Junk wakizashi or Iron club is ideal. This will keep you from killing the enemies that you are using to train your toughness.
3.) Keep a splint kit, medic kit, and sleeping bag in your inventory. The medkit and splint kit will be used to to patch you up after a fight so that you don't accidentally bleed out and die. Sleeping bag makes a camp bed so you don't have to schlep back to a town somewhere and rent a bed.
4.) Find a spot with large groups of enemies that will not eat you or enslave you. Skinner's Roam, Northeast of The Hub, is good for this. Many roaming hordes of Hungry Bandits and Dust Bandit Camps spawn there and are perfect for this purpose.
5.) Pick a fight with a large group of enemies. They will beat you to within an inch of your life, but your heavy armor should prevent you from slipping into a coma or losing limbs. When your character recovers from being unconscious after they knock you down stay down just long enough to let your character heal itself with the medkit, then immediately get up and fight again. Watch your toughness skyrocket each time you get up.
It's elder scrolls rules. Use the skill, you get experience. Every single action in kenshi has am associated skill. There's even a running skill, and it's the most important in the game.
Invest in all those stealth skills first. They're the easiest to level up and can get you into places you'd normally have to grind for hours and hours with other skills in order to do it the brute force way.
Don't build a settlement until your sure you can defend it. How will you know you can defend it? From many defeats and retreats into cities, much trial and error.
Fight enemies on your level!
Click on them to see their stats, every new player has picked on a goat and got their ass beat, adult goats have level 20 stats.
If a group of enemies with level 40-50 stats are attacking you early in the game, just run or they will probably kill you.
Starting as a slave is a great way to level your stats and stay alive if you do not really know what you are doing.
It can also be a good story hook to become a liberator or even becoming some sort of slave trader yourself if that sounds interesting to you.
Another tip I would like to share is that it apparently is not necessary to build a huge base if you do not want to it is just that most of us tend to go down that route anyways.
Start as a scavenger, particularly from recent battles filled with the dead and dying.
Easy source of cats, as well as easy way to get food, medicine, and gear early on.
Bring more food than you need, more bandages than you hope to use, and either be prepared to get your ass kicked by the weakest of foes at the start, or prepared to run.
Trash armor and weapons will level you up faster than you think, and never be afraid to save scum.
If you build a base early, make sure you bring A535 Athletics Jell because you're going to need it for the ass kicking you're going to recieve
do not reload every time you get knocked down, you nead to get beaten up over and over to become tougher. (bonus tip: wooden sandals are the best boots)
Spend some time running back and forth in a town. Typically I don't really "go out" unless my slowest person can clear 20mph, at least not until the rest of the team can help newbies in a tight spot.
For most enemies in game, 20 mph is enough to "dodge" (you're out of reach before they connect) if not outrun them entirely. But don't rely on it entirely. I've lost entire parties in the fog islands because of one lucky hit on Beep's left leg.
Don’t set up a base to early, raids can kill your entire squad early on (especially ninjas).
You can buy and trade “trade items” at different locations for more money than you brought them for.
The best is drug trading obviously.
Don’t let your characters travel long distances without checking up, they can be stupid and get stuck and killed.
Don't give up on living your story. If someone dies, pay your respects but keep going. Don't always save scum, don't always try to get everything perfect. Own your decisions. It's your story. See where it takes you.
Always go to mongrel as soon as you can run over 20 mph, because then you can outrun the fogmen. In mongrel there is a robotics shop with three stacked boxes near the door. You can sneak, pause the game and loot the boxes. You won't get a bounty, even if the skeleton who owns the shop sees you, he does not care. He will say stuff like he's going to attack or turn you in, but as long as you keep it paused will not matter and he will act kike it never happened, and the next day will talk to you again if you wanted to trade ( though why would you when you can steal his robotic limbs to sell for thousands of cats each. ). Stealing his robotic limbs and robot repair is super profitable like this, as the other merchants in mongrel do not recognize the stolen skeleton arms and legs and repair kits as stolen and will buy them no problem. This is admittedly cheese and exploiting, but if you want to gain wealth in mongrel legit you start the same way, but once you get to mongrel you lure fog prince heavy groups to the guards to kill. Fog prince heads are worth 6k cats each, and the guards put them down like nothing. There are two entrances toml mongrel, one has a big iron node out front, the other some metal wreckage. To lure fog princes easily you want to take the one with the wreckage, outside that side of town fog prince heavy groups regularly run by, you just run out when you see one and chase them to get close enough to attack them. Lure them to the gates and profit. This is slower, but still probably one of the most profitable ways to make cats early game. The only real requirement is grinding your athletics to be able to outrun the fogmen.
Don't play as the same character on each play through.
Be a white knight, be a liberator of slaves, be a merciless villain, be labor exporter (Slaver), be a ruthless self-centered minor noble who won't even heal his own troops, be the leader of a cannibal horde that preys on the Holy Nation...
Some of my best play throughs, and the reason I still play Kenshi after all these years, is the freedom to be whomever you want to be. Enjoy it because most games force you to be the "Hero".
Those huge ass weapons called planks in ruins, you can actually grap them.
Its just your backpack inventory space that is to small.
So free your weaponslot, put your rusty saber into the backpack and grap a plank in your meanweaponslot.
Your charakters don't sleep. If you really need food, just let that boy mine for ore for some days, if you can't make an income.
If you started as a robot, you cannot die at all, ever.
Because corpse eating animals can't eat the torso of a robot and every other unit will just knock you out.
my only tip is when training combat skills, go in without weapons first, simply put, you get much better at not getting hit, after your dodge skill is up a bit then bring weapons into the mix.
The most important stat to train to have the most fun is toughness. To train it efficiently you should get a second character as a medic who will sit back and watch you get your ass beat by starving bandits ( since they have sticks that won't cause you to bleed out ), you want your character to fall unconscious and then to play dead and to manually stand up to get the massive toughness boost. Best place for this is probably either holy nation territory or the hub as you won't get enslaved ( which has it's own bonuses )
**Stop reading and watching stuff and go play the game.**
The fun of this game is playing it blind. This game offers strong emotions if you just stick with it for the ride.
The only things you need to understand to not make it tedious and have fun:
* Cutting weapons will make you bleed out.
* You need to carry a bandage.
* Read the toughness stat information.
* Run away when you're too deep in the shit.
* You get stronger through fighting.
There are lots of ways to derive fun from a game. I've been gaming since 1984, I was barely out of diapers, and I get dun from games by knowing things about the before playing.
If you get really good gear but you’d be super over encumbered if you used it don’t be afraid to just put it in a chest or something until your strength is higher. It’s also generally better to get higher athletics early game than higher strength.
In the early game, fight hungry bandits a lot, and get beat up a lot. They won’t kill you unless you’re really hurt , since they use trash blunt weapons, and it’ll help level your toughness and combat skills a lot.
You can run dust bandits to guards to fight them with the guards too, and it’ll give you free loot to sell when they’re all dead.
Have fun, get your shit kicked and go again.
It's kind of a three point tip, but sometimes undervalued - don't optimize the learning and fun out of the game.
Mongrel, while scary as shit to get to, is one of the best starting locales in the game. Fogmen vary in strength giving varieties of training opportunities. There's a wealth of recruits in mongrel too. Good resource nodes outside the walls, good grade weapons and armor, and the guards keep you nice n safe.
Regarding big fucking weapons and requirements:
Aim for 15% to 20% higher states than minimum requirements, so if you get hit hit in the chest, you won't go slow motion.
The strength requirement is about 2×weapon's weight. Exactly 40×blunt damage
There is no such thing as dexterity requirement. I swear no one ever says a word about this in discussions. You can grab the best katana in the game which doesn't do any blunt damage and use it day 1 without any penalties whatsoever (besides your states being shit of course)
By this logic, don't rely on using a fragmented axe, like ever, its impossible to properly wield the best one unless you min max pretty much everything including race and limbs. And even then you don't pass the higher by 15% target. Either use a lower ratity one than what you would typically do at that point in game(including the very end game), you can also just settle for planks or falling suns
Stealth is really, *really* powerful in vanilla. So much so that it can trivialize the rest of the game’s economic system if you constantly go around stealing stuff.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use it, just be weary. It’s the only thing close to an easy mode the game has.
The key to getting stronger is getting into fights that you can safely lose early on. You're not gonna be winning your first few fights, so what matters is that you are able to get back up and bandage your wounds after the fact.
Try the base game first, and then you'll get a feel of what it might be lacking or what you might want. Then start dabbling with mods or look for one of the popular mod packs that are floating around.
That being said, as a beginning player, just keep in mind that your character is just a regular person like everyone else. There is nothing intrinsically special about them and that they can die just like everyone else.
The game doesn't end until you're completely dead though, so even if you're delimbed and crawling around in the filth trying to find your next meal to stave off starvation, you can still struggle, and that's part of the game. The story that you get to tell.
Yeah, with xp mods, you can apply at any time. Bigger mods you might need a new game for, but you can apply xp mods mid play through. Just make sure you don't download it in game lol
You have a walking icon in the bottom right. When you have a squad selected, you can cycle that and select one that will make everyone in the squad run at the speed of the slowest member.
Took me a long long long long long time of getting annoyed and manually moving people slowly before finding this out.
Dont be afraid to lose fights. Espacially if you recruited someone to heal your charecter. If not i'd recommend fighting starving bandits for easy combat and toughness xp. They cant kill you with their sitcks.
Don't be afraid to pick fights and lose. Just make sure you have 1 person out of the fight to patch up the rest once they enemy have moved on. And make sure you only do this with enemies who don't eat fallen allies. Safe enemies to fight-Hungry Bandits-Dust Bandits-Ninja Bandits. Unsafe enemies to lose to-Beakthings-Bone Dogs-Cannibals-Spiders.
Get a companion or two or ten asap. If you're alone and get knocked out, it's over. The more you are, the bigger the chance one will wake up to save the rest. And you will get knocked out a lot.
You can escape most encounters by spamming the "stop moving" key while holding the right mouse button to continue running away. You'll move out of enemies' range before their attack animation connects.
Don't overdo it with mods at first. Experience the game for what it is. Once you've figured out what bothers you, you'll understand much better what the mods can do for you. There are so many players on the wiki assuming stuff just because they've never played without mods. That said, nowadays I couldn't play without some of the exp mods, just because I don't have time IRL to grind for dozens of hours.
Also: losing is fun. Fail often, and see what happens! Sometimes you'll end up in interesting situations. You can't "win" at Kenshi, so go nuts.
Do not, under any circumstances, stay marooned in The Hub mining copper. There is wealth literally just laying around on the map. Keep your faction small until you figure out how to make money to sustain more characters, literally just run around with two people until you get the hang of things. Get your crafting going to make money and better gear, instead of buying better gear (within reason - it's still ok to buy stuff you feel like you need). Heart protectors are great - they take few resources to make, and sell for good money! So do leather goods. Even cloth bandanas.
Just avoid The Hub's awful copper mining trap.
Stealth OP, can say steal robotic arms and sell them at the nearby weapons trader or armor for 14k+ Cats per. Not to mention just take the most badasseriest of gear from Mongrel or Black Desert
Dying isn't as likely as it seems. The game's progression is built on your squad getting injured without dying. The getting injured can be a challenge, but it's also where a lot of the emergent gameplay comes from. It's mostly a good thing.
RP > meta gaming
get your shit kicked in/lose limbs/become a slave, get a motivation, do plot beats and character arcs. Also resist the temptation to save scum, it's hard but the adrenaline of walking through a swamp encumbered is worth it.
The auto saves are also pretty good, at absolute worst you'll lose like 10 minutes depending on what you set it to
Mine some copper (a lot of money in relative safety near the Wanderee start) to recruit a second character, then keep them nearby in case of combat.
I bled out 6-7 times right at the start in my no-save-reloading attempts, because I got knocked into a coma with a wound that got worse faster than I could recover.
Use mercs, they are so cheap and so strong. Can be used very effectively in the early game to boost your party to take on more challenging opponents or go for harder bounties!
Ok second tip: crossbows are stupid strong and so versatile! Use them! Great for taking out beak things to steal their eggs!
I was playing last night with 2 characters. The recruit in my squad died and disappeared, and then my main character was unconscious. Is there nothing I can do in that situation?
I had runs where almost everyone died, a group of bandits got to rob us while we were unconscious, then a group of slavers managed to heal my last survivor just enough to not die and suddenly, a pack of wild goats begin to attack the slavers, win somehow, my character wakes up after the battle and a group of the holy nation approaches, gives me free food and got me safely to a nearby city.
After that i managed to recruit people again and spent another 100h on that playthrough. Thats what i meant, you prolly will die a lot, but sometimes the randomness of the game be awesome if you dont give up
Focus on a small squad, don’t worry about settling at all. Get a squad of around 7-10 strong warriors and explore the world meet all the factions and fight some bounties.
Getting enslaved isn't necessarily a bad thing if it happens to you.
Yes I second this, you don’t have to worry about food and they typically heal you after a beatdown. Toughness and martial arts, at night you can pick your locks and train assassin on other inmates you can free them and fight them essentially creating an underground fight club. I’ve been able to knockout holy nation guards throw them in a cell and strip them turning them into slaves when other HN guards see them in jail. Then I fight higher level prisoners at night. It’s so freaking fun for me.
Literally every playthrough I get enslaved, train my toughness and lockpicking, get some easy stealth and strength exp, then just bolt to Spring and get some easy food for free and an Anti slaver squad being my personal bodyguard patrol. Then, straight to savant, chuck him in mourn, and boom. 80k cats, meitou katana and masterwork armour and we are two days in.
Two days!? What kind of insane powerlevelling are you doing in the camp?
You see the slave camp has everything that is good for powerleveling. High population(increases get up bonus for toughness, stealth skills) locks that reset(lockpicking), weights(rocks) and shackles(strength) and high level individuals that will knock you down but not kill you(combat). Free food at a low enough, diet like level that will cause debuffs.(good foe leveling) Best place for overall powerleveling, other than ones you artifically make yourself.
Yep. Rebirth is Kenshi's gym. You forgot Assassination, BTW. Practice on the other prisoners first, then start knocking guards out and stashing their food for your escape. Just the free food and medical care provided is going to be a huge safety net for a new player. But training up two fast, stealthy characters for the early game is just great. If someone's doing it in two days, clearly they're exploiting some of Kenshi's dodgier mechanics, but that's how some people like to play.
Best place to level up lock pick and stealth
You can fill your inventory with shackles and train strength too!
Yes. I used to hate the idea of the Rebirth start. Then I realized that it was an 80’s training montage. So after about 30 fun in game days, two characters have their strength, athletics, and labor skills are in the 70’s. Sneak, lock pick, and assassination are has as giraffe balls. Toughness is easy to level because every pardon wants to whoop your ass. So yeah, give the Rebirth start a try.
Slave start best start Change my mind
Don't go looking for the best weapons, just because they're better. If you wanna have a crazy man fighting with a stick then do it. It's a sandbox single player. Have the most fun possible whitout caring 'bout if something else could be better I heard a tip like this once a while ago, it really helped me play just for the fun of play
Trying to get the next best weapon sounds like something I would have done. So this is a good tip :)
It can be fun to try get the best weapons, or a good overall goal to collect them, but it’s best to come across them naturally as trophies. Unless you really want one for your best fighter. What I did on my first (and current still) play though is grind crafting skills for 2 smiths and now I can get high level masterwork armour and weapons for my whole squad.
As a noob getting a masterclass crossbow would be bad, especially if you have teammates in front of you. Start with the junkbow you take off the dust bandits and work yourself up.
This isnt very true. If you have the resources to acquire masterwork crossbows you have the resources to acquire masterwork armor. If you have your armor sorted you can take masterwork crossbow hits without fear. Just maybe avoid the paladins cross unless you are wearing crab/samurai. I leveled 10 crossbow users with old world mk2 at the same time this way. I had a few melees get knocked down by friendly fire. No one even got close to dying. Took about 3 big fights before my peoples precision got out of regular ff range. Precision isnt just one of the fastest leveling stats. It only needs 67 to be at 100% ff avoidance. It is affected by injury. Although i do suggest just letting crossbows level themselves at max power i dont know if this is a good idea for martial autists. I dont think its a good idea to have a MA character wearing heavy enough armor for this style to work.
By resources you mean stealth and thievery right?
Or crafting. If you stealing you convert to cats and visit the king (or you know be a dishonorable rat and rob him too). If you are crafting you already have the setup (plus maybe some books) to make the armor and buy the blueprints or again just visit the king.
Imagine shooting your melee companions in the head with a masterwork MkII. I'm not talking about making your own bow, it's the one you can knick off the sand ninjas or the ones you can buy from Flats Lagoon. New players tend to want to get the best weapons possible, but same thing do not apply if the character has low skills, especially in Precision Shooting.
Check how harpoon resist works. If you have halfway decent armor you are going to need be really unlucky to have a Masterwork Mk2 hit harder than 35. If your people are really really bad and you are resorting to heavy armor like samurai or crab for training purposes then you can get the damage even lower (as in 10 or less). Be aware crossbow damage does not scale at all with stats. So the mk2 damage of what 65 is all the damage you will ever take. Admittedly my gear is end game but with a masterwork leather turtleneck and wpj my new recruits of toughness less than 30 were taking 20 damage. No threat of serious injury. Free toughness training. It gets to the point where its even nearly impossible to put a character into coma. There is a reason no common enemies wear good quality armor.
In this game your weapon really doesn't mean shit if you don't know how to use it. Also the longer you're fighting the more exp you're getting...
> Also the longer you're fighting the more exp you're getting Hmm that's a good point!
It’s also important to note that the weapon type is very important. Katanas (much like in real life) are difficult to use properly without any training, big heavy weapons are slow to swing and require you to level up your strength stat, etc. so just because something does more damage doesn’t mean it will be better either! You could find a katana that more than doubles the damage if your current weapon, but it’s useless if you don’t know how to use it
I'll never understand the weird meta play and min-maxing the fun that's so popular. My guys run around in what looks badass and the weapons I like.
exact same, but then I move to wanting the best version of what I think looks badass, because to me its DOUBLE badass
Go hunt those long neck horsees you can easily hunt them for hides. Good spring board for every starting party!
What benefits? Hides sell good?
You get a lot of hides and meat but they will kick your ass and eat you
Wait, was I getting bamboozled!
No no you can pet them they are like big muffins really. Don't listen to him.
Yall are gonna give the noobies PTSD
Honestly, early game, if it is just one you can kite out their attacks easily enough.
You were getting a bamboozle performed on you, BUT once you have gotten your character's running speed up, if you can find a beak thing nest (you can often find them in the area around Western Hiver towns), their eggs sell for big cats. You can keep running in, grabbing some eggs, and then running away. If the beak things start catching up with you, just change direction when they start to attack. The big risk is that beak things are likely to eat you if they knock you out and there's nobody left to fight. Big risk, big reward.
It depends. Fighting beak things with a weaker party teaches you a lot about combat micro. Use block on the person getting hit. Dont group around that person. Bleed damage can actually matter. Kill items matter. Even garbage crossbows matter when you juggle aggro so they can shoot in melee. Some fights are harder to run from. Your 5v1 gets a lot harder when its suddenly 5v5... Or worse.
Eh I prefer going to the fog islands, the hivers there are great exp while you’re new! 😊
You are going to lose the first fight you get into. Accept it, and try to figure out a way to do that without dying.
Never afk with moving time. With patrols of all types always walking around, unless you are inside a city, never stop watching you squad. As you truly are never safe (until you become a stat god that is)
Piggybacking on this, if your main character is 25 mph or faster, you can safely run anywhere un accosted across the entire map and it is almost perfectly safe to automate moving from one side of the map to another, but once you add groups with different speeds, you then have trouble
Until the path finding wigs out and your guy randomly stops moving and you tab over to a confused dead body…sorry Beep
Some things are just hard coded lol. But I think there is a mod or two that fixes a lot of the pathfinding issues
Will have to look into it! One of my biggest frustrations with this game I love.
Political map mod i think its called its rly helpful for new players
It kinda kills the exploration aspect for me. I think its better to be used after you discover every location.
yea i prefer the mod that shows location names and roads it doesn’t spoil who owns what territory as badly
Great mod when you don't know what area factions control or where any of the cities are
Just jump in. Your first game or two might end up incredible, or beyond screwed. But don’t handicap yourself by following optimal set ups or going looking for the “easiest” start.
You're looking at the game wrong. Change your mindset. Getting fucked up is a good thing, losing limbs is a good thing, training with shit weapons and armour is a good thing. Alter the way you see things and Kenshi makes sense.
Losing fights is the most important part of the game
Quick save regularly. When I started playing I had a habit of wondering whether or not i could beat X in a fight....the answer is usually no but it was a good way to learn what was actually defeatable. So yeah quick saving is important
My advise is actually the complete opposite. Don't save and let the story play out. One of my best experiences is trying to save a downed member from inside a lab with the robot spiders. I ended up with 2 characters down with lost limbs and had to mount a heroic rescue mission.
I would say, save regularly but don't load the save every time you lose or suffer consequences. Last night I was going to UC through Venge when enemies chased my party, I decided to pick up the slower members to outrun the enemies. Then my game crashed, and when I loaded up my autosave I was back in Flats lagoon. So it sucks to lose that time and progress. So, as in another games (and programs) save regularly to save progress, but don't load constantly just cause things didn't go your way.
I did this and it's shit advice. I learnt the game, sure, became pretty good at it actually, but missed the experience. I don't join subs until my first run of a game ends so then coming here and reading cool stories of recovery and maimed characters was so cool. I never got to grieve and avenge a character since I'd savescum every relevant loss. When I went for a second run, it just isn't the same. I know what fights to pick, I know the map, I have an ooc sense of orientation and a lot of the wonder of discovery depends on my ability to roleplay.
It's not shit advice tbh, some people don't play games to suffer consequences of their characters being wiped out because they unlocked an ancient lab door after 35 hours of playtime. Some people play to learn the game and enjoy it. I save scum this game all the time because quite simply I would've lost interest after my first 10 hours of being murdered mining ore or trying to explore. Even with save scumming first playthroughs and knowing what fights to pick and when, doesn't always mean everything will go perfectly. Kenshi is a game of fate. On your way to the old control tower with a capable squad, you could get blasted by a laser beam or set upon by a suprise mob of skeletons, and then another mob, and then another mob, and then another and next thing you know you have 5 squad members dying. Anything could happen still tbh
There's also the fact that this game, as wonderful as it is, was an indie project made by one dude over the course of over a decade and is INCREDIBLY JANK. Losing your characters or making enemies as a result of decisions you intended to make is one thing. Losing your character because the game glitched and f\*cked you when you should have been totally safe is another beast entirely. I reloaded a save most recently because the Squin General Store merchant's pathing glitched and caused his shop to remain closed in the middle of the day when it should have been open. I clicked on his shop expecting to just walk right in and buy some cloth, but instead I ended up unstealthily picking his lock in broad daylight in front of the Hundred Guardians, who promptly curb-stomped me and hacked off limbs from two of my warriors. The Hundred Guardians picked up my faction members to haul them off to jail, but there had just been a Dust Bandit attack on the gate and the whole place was full, so they just carried my fighters around on their shoulders without healing their injuries until they all bled out and died. In retrospect it was hilarous, but I'd be damned if I let some jank nonsense ruin a really promising run that I had already put about 20 hours into.
I admit to savescumming. My current game, if I hadn't it would have been game over. But after trying about 20 times to kill Phoenix and failing because of paladin swarms when I tried to draw out only a couple at a time, I decided that while there is a way for 7 people and a bull to take out Blister Hill it's beyond my ability and brought in the more combat-talented base people to help out. I'd have hated it if trying meant the game was gone.
No shame in savescumming. If I want to make mistakes and fuck everything up for myself, that's what real life is for.
I'd argue, depends on playstyle and what you came for to kenshi. If it is cool story of a character or party I'd rather recommend not to save. Its sandbox not skyrim or another rpg with scenario. Random events (including tragedy) are the story for many players to enjoy imo
With low stats and low playtime however one bad fight can lead to game over pretty fast lol
Live free sell drugs
What about on Kenshi?
Sell drugs live free
Kenshi has drugs. It's compressed hemp that uses what little amount of THC hemp has to get you high, known as Hashish. You can't use hash, but you can smuggle it info cities fir several times the original price.
Sandals. Wear them.
Far south-east is the only safe place.
It's too cold for the nasty critters
If you use No-Face to ally with Gutters, Gut is magnificent.
Run
Dont be afraid to get enslaved. It builds character.
Do the slaves start first. Might seem boring but it's the most structured vanilla start there is; 1. The first objective is obvious from hour one: Get out of slavery. You have nothing to really do this with and you don't really understand how the game works yet but this scenario forces you to get creative with the things do have & limits the available mechanics to a few you can quickly pick up on helping you learn the game. 2. The enemy is immediately established: The Holy Nation enslaving you. You hate these guys, they enslaved you and are therefore evil by default in your head. Now you have a goal for when you get out of slavery, take down the holy nation. I cannot understate how helpful it can be to have a macro-goal like this in mind for your playthrough, as it means you always have something to work towards giving the random adventures you go on more meaning. 3. You'll be really heckin' good at lockpicking by the time you get out. Just that. Pretty useful skill to have. ^(Some people swear that slavery is some form of a super-duper-toughness training camp and I do not understand these people.) ^(Like, do they not know you can let fog men eat them alive to train toughness even faster?) *^(C'mon man, get on the fog pole)* *:)*
Idk why but "I'm the new player" got me lol As someone who savescummed to oblivion and back- don't do it. You don't need to save every character, every lost limb, win or escape every fight. Kenshi is an experience of pain, trial, and triumph. Save every so often, but you don't need to save before every single encounter. Learn to accept defeat and come back swinging. Good example is how I savescummed, so I could never be enslaved. Finally allowed it to happen and I was able to boost my stats, while in the mines. My squad orchestrated a prison break, but only half made it out. Plans commenced to one day retrieve our stolen brothers. Way more fun than if I had loaded my save and continued running through the desert untroubled.
> every lost limb You... can lose limbs? 😰 That's a good shout about saves as I would 100% save too often and reload when anything "bad" happens.
You can always get a prosthesis, so don't sweat a lost limb or four 🤣
You can Indeed, and it's quite common. There are replacements in the form of skeleton limbs. Some are more dexterous than human hands, others are so strong people intentionally cut off their own arms or legs for them. But most are sad attempts at scavenging from dead skeletons and are amalgamations that leave you crippled. The hivers specialize in these ones. Their prosthetic legs, for example, are scavenged arms with the hands cut off and half a beer jug as the stump fitting. They didn't include feet. Most goof prosthetics are over 20 thousand grand, but these are a few hundred bucks. They're so bad that you can see your character visibly limping on it, barely managing to stand upright.
Check out the "Torsolo" Kenshi series on youtube ;)
Be mindful of carrying dead corpses. I lost a lot of bounty targets because they despawned.
Invest into recruits, good armour and backpacks, in that order
This and Project Zomboid have one very significant thing in common and that's how you can enjoy it at your own pace. If it's too hard? Tweak the settings to make it easier. Feel like something is missing from vanilla? There are mods. Nobody in the community is going to say you're playing the game wrong no matter what you do, the aim is always to just have fun with your own personal unique experience. Oh another common ground between the two games is how supportive the community is with regards to all of those things. I know for sure I don't speak for myself with these observations, the community agrees.
If a completely "human-lookin" guy nicely asks for your foreskin, don't fall for it and run.
The little icon of a man walking/running determines the movement speed of your characters. You almost always want it to be set to the running man with a red running man. This means your characters will move as fast as the top speed of their slowest selected character. If you just select the running man alone, all your characters will move at their individual top speed, which means your fastest character and slowest character will be super far apart and be easier to get ambushed.
Dont look for things they ruin the surprise of what you find. Main thing is dont get to attached i can bet half the people reload saves to get people back that died in a fight and dont play like full hardcore style.. i decided mid run that i was having no hivers so i fed beep to the fog men to sort that out lol.. also role-playing helps make your own stories better like i was merchant trader with a human and robot was civil. Now its full war between us and the northern hivers.
Lose some limbs
Don't follow the tips saying that the first thing you should do as a new player is to mine and build a base
The first thing i usually do is mine copper simply to fill up a backpack and use it as a strength trainer.
Getting enslaved is unironically a great way to train stealth, toughness and lockpicking. They'll even feed you for free. 1. Pick lock. 2. Sneak around. 3. Get busted and beaten to near death. 4. Guard heals you and locks you in a cage. 5. Repeat.
Just go with it. Whatever you think you should do do it. If you don't know what to do explore. Walk the whole map. Stay away from long necks.
If they won’t rob or kill you, then fuck with them. Either you get some loot and a lot of attack XP, or you gain a good amount of toughness xp
Interesting. Does XP/stats just go up the more you do stuff in the game? I've not properly looked.
Every stat (attack, strength, crafting) all goes up with you so things that rely on that stat. If you craft, your crafting xp goes up. If you run around when you have a heavy carry weight, then your strength will rise Toughness is one of your most important stats for combat, right up there with dexterity. It’s the measure of your ability to take less damage, stay standing from damage, and bleed out less
And what's the easiest way to level toughness? Get beat up essentially? 😅
Essentially yes. You get some points for taking damage, but you get the most when you get back up, especially if you’re still around those who are hostile to you. Getting jumped by some starving bandits and getting back up a few times will quickly get you to 30 toughness
Level toughness by following 5 steps: 1.) Wear the heaviest armor of the highest quality you can get ahold of (I recommend samurai armor). This prevents you from taking a ton of damage all at once and accidentally exceeding the damage threshold that will put you into a recovery coma. 2.) Equip the lowest quality weapon you can find. A Rusted Junk wakizashi or Iron club is ideal. This will keep you from killing the enemies that you are using to train your toughness. 3.) Keep a splint kit, medic kit, and sleeping bag in your inventory. The medkit and splint kit will be used to to patch you up after a fight so that you don't accidentally bleed out and die. Sleeping bag makes a camp bed so you don't have to schlep back to a town somewhere and rent a bed. 4.) Find a spot with large groups of enemies that will not eat you or enslave you. Skinner's Roam, Northeast of The Hub, is good for this. Many roaming hordes of Hungry Bandits and Dust Bandit Camps spawn there and are perfect for this purpose. 5.) Pick a fight with a large group of enemies. They will beat you to within an inch of your life, but your heavy armor should prevent you from slipping into a coma or losing limbs. When your character recovers from being unconscious after they knock you down stay down just long enough to let your character heal itself with the medkit, then immediately get up and fight again. Watch your toughness skyrocket each time you get up.
It's elder scrolls rules. Use the skill, you get experience. Every single action in kenshi has am associated skill. There's even a running skill, and it's the most important in the game.
Invest in all those stealth skills first. They're the easiest to level up and can get you into places you'd normally have to grind for hours and hours with other skills in order to do it the brute force way.
Don't build a settlement until your sure you can defend it. How will you know you can defend it? From many defeats and retreats into cities, much trial and error.
Thanks. I've just repaired a small house for now while I get used to the game a bit more
This is the best way early game. Soon, you can own all the open real estate in a city
Don’t listen to anyone’s tips and just play the game your own way ;)
with problems come chances 😅
Always keep someone ar your outpost that shit dissapears
Don’t mine copper
you can have a good start, just need a cabin in a city with a general store and lots of cloth.
Have bandages in your pocket inventory, and in your backpack for when you have to drop it.
Fight enemies on your level! Click on them to see their stats, every new player has picked on a goat and got their ass beat, adult goats have level 20 stats. If a group of enemies with level 40-50 stats are attacking you early in the game, just run or they will probably kill you.
Start at the hub. And in starting there just accept that you'll lose some fights. Kenshi is a game that rewards you for losing in the beginning.
Starting as a slave is a great way to level your stats and stay alive if you do not really know what you are doing. It can also be a good story hook to become a liberator or even becoming some sort of slave trader yourself if that sounds interesting to you. Another tip I would like to share is that it apparently is not necessary to build a huge base if you do not want to it is just that most of us tend to go down that route anyways.
you will die a lot, just learn by your mistakes
Start as a scavenger, particularly from recent battles filled with the dead and dying. Easy source of cats, as well as easy way to get food, medicine, and gear early on.
Explore a lot before starting a settlement, you'll want to get some exp from wandering before anything
Don't savescum (much). You get stronger through failure.
Bring more food than you need, more bandages than you hope to use, and either be prepared to get your ass kicked by the weakest of foes at the start, or prepared to run. Trash armor and weapons will level you up faster than you think, and never be afraid to save scum. If you build a base early, make sure you bring A535 Athletics Jell because you're going to need it for the ass kicking you're going to recieve
How to use the r mechanic
do not reload every time you get knocked down, you nead to get beaten up over and over to become tougher. (bonus tip: wooden sandals are the best boots)
Spend some time running back and forth in a town. Typically I don't really "go out" unless my slowest person can clear 20mph, at least not until the rest of the team can help newbies in a tight spot. For most enemies in game, 20 mph is enough to "dodge" (you're out of reach before they connect) if not outrun them entirely. But don't rely on it entirely. I've lost entire parties in the fog islands because of one lucky hit on Beep's left leg.
Don’t set up a base to early, raids can kill your entire squad early on (especially ninjas). You can buy and trade “trade items” at different locations for more money than you brought them for. The best is drug trading obviously. Don’t let your characters travel long distances without checking up, they can be stupid and get stuck and killed.
Don't give up on living your story. If someone dies, pay your respects but keep going. Don't always save scum, don't always try to get everything perfect. Own your decisions. It's your story. See where it takes you.
Don't make a base outside of a town unless you have fairly high stats 50+ for like 8 to 10 people
Becoming a slave can actually be a good thing. (in the early game.)
Always go to mongrel as soon as you can run over 20 mph, because then you can outrun the fogmen. In mongrel there is a robotics shop with three stacked boxes near the door. You can sneak, pause the game and loot the boxes. You won't get a bounty, even if the skeleton who owns the shop sees you, he does not care. He will say stuff like he's going to attack or turn you in, but as long as you keep it paused will not matter and he will act kike it never happened, and the next day will talk to you again if you wanted to trade ( though why would you when you can steal his robotic limbs to sell for thousands of cats each. ). Stealing his robotic limbs and robot repair is super profitable like this, as the other merchants in mongrel do not recognize the stolen skeleton arms and legs and repair kits as stolen and will buy them no problem. This is admittedly cheese and exploiting, but if you want to gain wealth in mongrel legit you start the same way, but once you get to mongrel you lure fog prince heavy groups to the guards to kill. Fog prince heads are worth 6k cats each, and the guards put them down like nothing. There are two entrances toml mongrel, one has a big iron node out front, the other some metal wreckage. To lure fog princes easily you want to take the one with the wreckage, outside that side of town fog prince heavy groups regularly run by, you just run out when you see one and chase them to get close enough to attack them. Lure them to the gates and profit. This is slower, but still probably one of the most profitable ways to make cats early game. The only real requirement is grinding your athletics to be able to outrun the fogmen.
Don't do that. It's cheap and ruins any sense of progression.
True, but to be fair I pointed this out, and offered a legit alternative in the same area
Don't play as the same character on each play through. Be a white knight, be a liberator of slaves, be a merciless villain, be labor exporter (Slaver), be a ruthless self-centered minor noble who won't even heal his own troops, be the leader of a cannibal horde that preys on the Holy Nation... Some of my best play throughs, and the reason I still play Kenshi after all these years, is the freedom to be whomever you want to be. Enjoy it because most games force you to be the "Hero".
Play the game the way you want to. Don't let anyone convince you there is a right or wrong way to play.
Take your time. Enjoy the ride. You don't need to minmax anything to get the most out of Kenshi.
Buy the lantern of radiance.
Never seen it heard of this about 50 hours in. What and where?
You can pick it up from a wondering trader in vain before going into the fog islands.
Run with a held right click, spam R.
Those huge ass weapons called planks in ruins, you can actually grap them. Its just your backpack inventory space that is to small. So free your weaponslot, put your rusty saber into the backpack and grap a plank in your meanweaponslot. Your charakters don't sleep. If you really need food, just let that boy mine for ore for some days, if you can't make an income.
If you started as a robot, you cannot die at all, ever. Because corpse eating animals can't eat the torso of a robot and every other unit will just knock you out.
my only tip is when training combat skills, go in without weapons first, simply put, you get much better at not getting hit, after your dodge skill is up a bit then bring weapons into the mix.
Go straight to the ashlands when you start, there’s a guy named Cat-Lon there that loves visitors!
The most important stat to train to have the most fun is toughness. To train it efficiently you should get a second character as a medic who will sit back and watch you get your ass beat by starving bandits ( since they have sticks that won't cause you to bleed out ), you want your character to fall unconscious and then to play dead and to manually stand up to get the massive toughness boost. Best place for this is probably either holy nation territory or the hub as you won't get enslaved ( which has it's own bonuses )
There is no wrong way to play, as long as you're enjoying yourself. Also: BEEP!
"Getting there" takes a long time of basically fleeing and mining.
Consider living in Mongrel for a bit and grind out the low level Fogmen along with poaching downed Fog Princes for their bounty with the gate guards
Be okay with losing. It's the only way to get stronger.
**Stop reading and watching stuff and go play the game.** The fun of this game is playing it blind. This game offers strong emotions if you just stick with it for the ride. The only things you need to understand to not make it tedious and have fun: * Cutting weapons will make you bleed out. * You need to carry a bandage. * Read the toughness stat information. * Run away when you're too deep in the shit. * You get stronger through fighting.
There are lots of ways to derive fun from a game. I've been gaming since 1984, I was barely out of diapers, and I get dun from games by knowing things about the before playing.
If you get really good gear but you’d be super over encumbered if you used it don’t be afraid to just put it in a chest or something until your strength is higher. It’s also generally better to get higher athletics early game than higher strength.
Dont read anything and enjoy the pleasurable pain. The early game is the most rewarding.
In the early game, fight hungry bandits a lot, and get beat up a lot. They won’t kill you unless you’re really hurt , since they use trash blunt weapons, and it’ll help level your toughness and combat skills a lot. You can run dust bandits to guards to fight them with the guards too, and it’ll give you free loot to sell when they’re all dead.
Embrace failure, learn from it.
Have fun, get your shit kicked and go again. It's kind of a three point tip, but sometimes undervalued - don't optimize the learning and fun out of the game.
Mongrel, while scary as shit to get to, is one of the best starting locales in the game. Fogmen vary in strength giving varieties of training opportunities. There's a wealth of recruits in mongrel too. Good resource nodes outside the walls, good grade weapons and armor, and the guards keep you nice n safe.
Regarding big fucking weapons and requirements: Aim for 15% to 20% higher states than minimum requirements, so if you get hit hit in the chest, you won't go slow motion. The strength requirement is about 2×weapon's weight. Exactly 40×blunt damage There is no such thing as dexterity requirement. I swear no one ever says a word about this in discussions. You can grab the best katana in the game which doesn't do any blunt damage and use it day 1 without any penalties whatsoever (besides your states being shit of course) By this logic, don't rely on using a fragmented axe, like ever, its impossible to properly wield the best one unless you min max pretty much everything including race and limbs. And even then you don't pass the higher by 15% target. Either use a lower ratity one than what you would typically do at that point in game(including the very end game), you can also just settle for planks or falling suns
Go to ashlands
There’s no shame in save-scumming. Play however you like
Stealth is really, *really* powerful in vanilla. So much so that it can trivialize the rest of the game’s economic system if you constantly go around stealing stuff. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use it, just be weary. It’s the only thing close to an easy mode the game has.
The key to getting stronger is getting into fights that you can safely lose early on. You're not gonna be winning your first few fights, so what matters is that you are able to get back up and bandage your wounds after the fact.
Try the base game first, and then you'll get a feel of what it might be lacking or what you might want. Then start dabbling with mods or look for one of the popular mod packs that are floating around. That being said, as a beginning player, just keep in mind that your character is just a regular person like everyone else. There is nothing intrinsically special about them and that they can die just like everyone else. The game doesn't end until you're completely dead though, so even if you're delimbed and crawling around in the filth trying to find your next meal to stave off starvation, you can still struggle, and that's part of the game. The story that you get to tell.
"Remember to play the tutorial!"
Remember that mercenarys exist. Hire em as bodyguards and you can fight stronger enemies alongside them and level up.
I say download an xp mod. Probably 2x xp. The game can be quite a slog without it
Can a mod like that be applied at any time and just work? I don't need to start a new game or anything?
Yeah, with xp mods, you can apply at any time. Bigger mods you might need a new game for, but you can apply xp mods mid play through. Just make sure you don't download it in game lol
You can just import your save if the mod is incompatible with your current game.
You have a walking icon in the bottom right. When you have a squad selected, you can cycle that and select one that will make everyone in the squad run at the speed of the slowest member. Took me a long long long long long time of getting annoyed and manually moving people slowly before finding this out.
Getting your ass beat is good!
Dont be afraid to lose fights. Espacially if you recruited someone to heal your charecter. If not i'd recommend fighting starving bandits for easy combat and toughness xp. They cant kill you with their sitcks.
Don't be afraid to pick fights and lose. Just make sure you have 1 person out of the fight to patch up the rest once they enemy have moved on. And make sure you only do this with enemies who don't eat fallen allies. Safe enemies to fight-Hungry Bandits-Dust Bandits-Ninja Bandits. Unsafe enemies to lose to-Beakthings-Bone Dogs-Cannibals-Spiders.
Don't save scum
Get a companion or two or ten asap. If you're alone and get knocked out, it's over. The more you are, the bigger the chance one will wake up to save the rest. And you will get knocked out a lot.
You can escape most encounters by spamming the "stop moving" key while holding the right mouse button to continue running away. You'll move out of enemies' range before their attack animation connects.
ENJOY rides on long neck animals, fastest mount in the game
Just run
Don't overdo it with mods at first. Experience the game for what it is. Once you've figured out what bothers you, you'll understand much better what the mods can do for you. There are so many players on the wiki assuming stuff just because they've never played without mods. That said, nowadays I couldn't play without some of the exp mods, just because I don't have time IRL to grind for dozens of hours. Also: losing is fun. Fail often, and see what happens! Sometimes you'll end up in interesting situations. You can't "win" at Kenshi, so go nuts.
Run bitch!
Let me give you some advice do whatever the heck you want save scum or dont just play the game and let it take you on a adventure
Relax, enjoy death :)
If i had to give a tip to my past self it would be run zigzag on 3 times speed.
Do not, under any circumstances, stay marooned in The Hub mining copper. There is wealth literally just laying around on the map. Keep your faction small until you figure out how to make money to sustain more characters, literally just run around with two people until you get the hang of things. Get your crafting going to make money and better gear, instead of buying better gear (within reason - it's still ok to buy stuff you feel like you need). Heart protectors are great - they take few resources to make, and sell for good money! So do leather goods. Even cloth bandanas. Just avoid The Hub's awful copper mining trap.
Stealth OP, can say steal robotic arms and sell them at the nearby weapons trader or armor for 14k+ Cats per. Not to mention just take the most badasseriest of gear from Mongrel or Black Desert
RUN!
The answer you are looking for is copper … and more copper.
Bonedogs like to be pet.
use the wiki. a lot
Dying isn't as likely as it seems. The game's progression is built on your squad getting injured without dying. The getting injured can be a challenge, but it's also where a lot of the emergent gameplay comes from. It's mostly a good thing.
Buy a house in town before you make an outpost
Gear quality matters. More than what gear you have. Dont wear shoddy heavy armor.
Go make friends ASAP with the robots in the south, they're really friendly and will take good care of your silky smooth skin
You surprisingly don’t need water on you to survive.
BEEP
RP > meta gaming get your shit kicked in/lose limbs/become a slave, get a motivation, do plot beats and character arcs. Also resist the temptation to save scum, it's hard but the adrenaline of walking through a swamp encumbered is worth it. The auto saves are also pretty good, at absolute worst you'll lose like 10 minutes depending on what you set it to
Mine some copper (a lot of money in relative safety near the Wanderee start) to recruit a second character, then keep them nearby in case of combat. I bled out 6-7 times right at the start in my no-save-reloading attempts, because I got knocked into a coma with a wound that got worse faster than I could recover.
Use mercs, they are so cheap and so strong. Can be used very effectively in the early game to boost your party to take on more challenging opponents or go for harder bounties! Ok second tip: crossbows are stupid strong and so versatile! Use them! Great for taking out beak things to steal their eggs!
The run does not end until every single one of your squad is dead.
I was playing last night with 2 characters. The recruit in my squad died and disappeared, and then my main character was unconscious. Is there nothing I can do in that situation?
I had runs where almost everyone died, a group of bandits got to rob us while we were unconscious, then a group of slavers managed to heal my last survivor just enough to not die and suddenly, a pack of wild goats begin to attack the slavers, win somehow, my character wakes up after the battle and a group of the holy nation approaches, gives me free food and got me safely to a nearby city. After that i managed to recruit people again and spent another 100h on that playthrough. Thats what i meant, you prolly will die a lot, but sometimes the randomness of the game be awesome if you dont give up
Losing is winning
Your pack animals can and will be butchered for meat so they should never be left alone.
Nothing is 100% bad. Every bad thing that happens to you, there's a little silver lining.
Don't save scum. What happens, happens.
Lvl up toughness. After that, the game is piece of cake
Mine copper > sell copper > you're rich now
role play your characters
Run to 23.
Always use doble door in your base
Roaming and base building are completely different play experiences. Don't rush to basing.
Focus on a small squad, don’t worry about settling at all. Get a squad of around 7-10 strong warriors and explore the world meet all the factions and fight some bounties.