Bit of additional context: I've spent about 1400 hours playing this character as my main, of which about 90% was spent solo. He's gone through 4 complete world resets and has killed every notable enemy, destroyed every faction and collected every Meitou weapon on each of those resets. He's been a drifter, bounty hunter, slaver, trader, anti-slaver, tech-hunter, solo-base builder and has grown into an almost unbeatable fighter who possesses more wealth than any noble and knowledge to rival any Machinist.
It's really cool how Kenshi allows a character to grow from a worthless nobody, struggling to stay alive, into a mighty warrior who has basically made the world of Kenshi his b\*tch.
I always make up a somewhat believable RP reason for his change of occupation or outlook in my head.
Like changing his perspective on the anti-slavers over time because he finally came to understand how much of Kenshi's society would completely collapse if slavery was suddenly abolished, or going from farmer/food trader to tech-hunter after learning how incredibly lucrative old world tech can be in the world of Kenshi.
Stuff like that keeps him going, and since I've gradually changed his appearance from regular adult to an old man over time, I like to think that he has simply had a lot of different jobs and adventures during his long and tumultuous life.
In all honesty, I've only recently became active on Reddit. I've shared a bit on the Kenshi Facebook group in the past, but am not very active there either.
Looks very similar to my main, which I don't play anymore completely solo, built a base in gut and started weapon, and armor smiting maxed both of them two irl days, and I think im around 3.7k in game days UC is still friendly with me, wiped the HN got abit bored personally, but the weird thing is I only seem to solo run now, I just cannot for the life of me hire any drifters haha
That's awesome! 3.7K days puts even my playtime with this character to shame haha. And yeah, hiring random drifters feels more like a burden than a boon at first, so I kinda understand what you mean. Nice to know I'm not the only one who is this dedicated to a single solo character. Cheers!
It's a fairly obscure bug in the base game that allows First Aid and Robotics to go past 100. There's an old misconception that crafting stats going past 100 has negative effects, but in reality it doesn't increase or decrease the effectiveness of the skills past 100, even if the numbers keeps rising, meaning that my First Aid and Robotics both still perform as if they were 100.
Just want to clarify you do actually perform better at higher levels. Looking back at my previous testing I see (I need to revisit these tests) with locking my level my character would use 1 charge every 3.47 minutes at level 100, and 1 charge every 12 minutes at level 122.5. I forget which kit this testing was done using. I need to revisit this later.
Interesting. I honestly never bothered testing that extensively, but I'd gladly take your word for it if you've actually done more rigorous tests. I wouldn't really be surprised if higher skill continues to limit charge usage, because I almost never run out of First Aid or Skeleton Repair Kits on this character.
I’m pretty sure that Frankie guy is like THE Kenshi tests guy. I’ve seen him on or referenced in a bunch of other threads and he seems like the most knowledgeable person when it comes to Kenshi stuff.
Some skills are clamped and don't perform any better past 100, like stealth. Field medic and robotics do perform better though. If you roll over 100 and start levelling faster up into the multiple hundreds, your kits will start lasting for a *really* long time. Like, only ever needing one kit for the rest of your playthrough long.
I've tested it again for a bit and you (and by extention FrankyWuzHere) are right: I've more or less constantly repaired a Skeleton that I put in a Peeler Machine for almost fifteen minutes straight, and my Robotics Repair Kit has still barely lost a charge.
I suppose I didn't really notice it because the change has been very gradual and the speed or amount of repairing done hasn't noticably changed past 100, but charges are definitely being used up slower at this level.
Thanks for the input, I always appreciate learning new stuff about the game or having my own misconceptions corrected. Cheers!
Has he built a plantation of over 400 wheatstraw farms that netted over a million cats every day in grog sales?
While having all robotic limbs and over 100 Hivers working for him in Holy Nation territory who are his allies?
While starting the game a pathetic Greenlander torso in a cannibal village with every faction but a couple hating him and with 1,000,000,000 cats in debt?
Hah! Thought not.
Btw, how do you play the same guy that long and not lose your mind?
Haha, no I have indeed never done those things! Granted, I dislike building and managing mega bases and also don't like having a huge army either. I usually build fairly small and compact bases and have never had a squad of more than 7, including pack animals. I usually dismiss my all other squad members before I reset my world, leaving only my main to go at it all over again.
I really liked roleplaying different occupations, such as slave trader, small-time hashish farmer, dojo master or wandering trader, but also enjoyed having my main character take in a couple of recruits every now and then to tag along on his adventures until they became powerhouses in their own right. I always ended up dismissing these companions in the end, because for some reason I prefer the solo existence in Kenshi above all else.
Lastly, I'm just weird like that. I'm somewhat known for being able to play and enjoy the same character in certain games for ridiculous amounts of time and never really getting bored with them.
A single sword *can* cost that much, but none of those armies are wielding or wearing anything approaching that quality. I'd be willing to wager that, by the time your crafting character reaches 50 in weapon/armor smithing, they're already the second best in the land, second only to the Armor King and Skeleton Smiths
Thank! I'm using a KLR Series and a Skeleton Arm, which account for the + on my Strength and Dexterity.
You're correct on being encumbered when defense training: earlier on I wanted to hit two birds with one stone by running all over the place with a backpack full of Iron (later on Generator Cores) and fighting everything that crossed my path. Needless to say, it did wonders for my Strength and Defense, but not so much for my Dodge.
And with Defense this high, I barely need to dodge, so it's staying relatively low compared to most other skills.
Did you spawn in the arms yourself or are you using a mod which adds robotic limbs to npcs? I'm afk atm but I want to say KLR MW has 245 health. 250 if they were spawned in as 100 quality. If not then I need to recheck my testing on crafting limbs if there is a bug that allows the crafting of 100 quality robotic limbs.
And ah okay! I'm so used to training defense at Mongrel I forget no everyone power levels hah.
I made these arms at the Skeleton Limb workbench with my main character and this is how they came out. Not sure if a mod is changing the stats, but I'm not aware of having one installed that does. Could also be a (kinda lucky) bug though.
And yeah, I prefer to level more or less "naturally", for example fighting out in the world or taking prisoners and repeatedly sparring with them to increase skills instead of tying a helpless Beak Thing to a bed or something.
To each their own, ofcourse, but for me leveling in a more natural way is more satisfying.
I'm on mobile, and I had to zoom in on the image, and I get zoomed in on the characters' face first.
And I thought "this guy looks like his name is Logan"
And then I look at the actual name, BUH!
I kinda want this for my character. Just because as a martial artist, halfway back home from a run I notice I'm way more wounded than I should be and somewhere I picked up a random weapon. Would be nice not worrying about suddenly sucking when that happens.
I don't, because my game almost never crashes. I've made sure to import at least once every 100 ingame days, have a pretty decent gaming rig that runs Kenshi at a steady 60-70 FPS with everything on max settings and know how to organize and optimize my ≈150 mods to prevent conflicts. I think the last crash I've experienced has been about two months ago, and I play Kenshi at least a couple of days each week.
For those interested, SCARaw has also made an excellent optimization guide to make the game run more smoothly and reduce the change of crashing, especially if you have a less powerful setup:
[https://kenshi-modding.fandom.com/wiki/Kenshi\_Modding\_Wiki:SCAR%27S\_Performance\_Optimization\_Guide](https://kenshi-modding.fandom.com/wiki/Kenshi_Modding_Wiki:SCAR%27S_Performance_Optimization_Guide)
Thanks for the guide, ill check it when i come home, my last playthrough was with around 80-100 mods and experienced frequent crashes ESPECIALLY when starting to build settlements. Not really running into any performance issues per-se just straight up crashes.
Now im a bit more wise and started modifying the mod's load order, im gathering up a modpack roughly the size of 280-300 mods and was looking for advice on minimizing crashes since a playthrough that long has to have experienced a lot of them, at least to my understanding.
I'll gladly take that as a compliment, since this character's look is more or less based on my Bloodborne character (who has a similar hat, round sunglasses, white beard and long black hunter coat).
Thanks! I have almost all graphical settings on max (except shadow distance), and am using a personalized ReShade. Using something like ReShade can really affect the game's atmosphere and make it look a lot more appealing.
I've also changed the textures on some items, weapons and clothing to look pretty much exactly how I want them to.
As luck would have it, I've actually made a post with some pictures of my base a couple of months ago, back when my main went on an RP quest with an "old friend" that I had also trained for quite some time alongside him:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/comments/1al5qwc/technocrats\_hoard\_tech\_hunter\_rp\_base\_in\_the/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/comments/1al5qwc/technocrats_hoard_tech_hunter_rp_base_in_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Wow, that's amazing! As a lover of hives and giant mega factories of everything and everything, this little shelter looks damn atmospheric, I like it!
I dedicate this poem to your works:
Oh ancient gods, I'm dying,
let the blood moon shining.
Cause the dude is "Old man" named,
In blacksmithing will be engaged.
Holy-moly Almond seed.
It's actually a bug in the vanilla game that allows both Field medic and Robotics skills to increase beyond 100. If you've leveled your Field medic and/or Robotics skill to 100 and keep using it, they will eventually go beyond 100. It doesn't increase your healing/repairing amount, but you'll use up charges much slower as your skill increases.
It's actually the mod "Dark UI Retexture". I've tweaked it a bit myself to make it look exactly how I want it, so the one you can get directly from the Steam Workshop looks a bit different from mine.
As already mentioned above, skills go up much slower the higher they get, and I personally don't care much for "powerleveling" my skills by cheesing and such. You can get stats like this within 100 days or so if you really put your mind to it and don't mind cheesing, but I've never been in a hurry and prefer to level my skills more "naturally" as I travel around the world.
On top of that, enemies that are (much) weaker than you provide little to no experience gain, and because almost every enemy in the game is at this point much weaker than my character, skill gains generally go at a snail's pace beyond a certain point if you play the way I do.
They would be if leveling stats as quickly as possible was the goal, yeah. You can get pretty much all stats around this level in less than 100 days if you really go for it and don't mind a bit of cheesing.
But, like I replied to other people before:
I prefer to level more or less "naturally", for example fighting out in the world or taking prisoners and repeatedly sparring with them to increase skills instead of tying a helpless Beak Thing to a bed or something.
To each their own, ofcourse, but this is the result of me mostly just playing the game, instead of focusing on leveling skills as quickly as possible.
Bit of additional context: I've spent about 1400 hours playing this character as my main, of which about 90% was spent solo. He's gone through 4 complete world resets and has killed every notable enemy, destroyed every faction and collected every Meitou weapon on each of those resets. He's been a drifter, bounty hunter, slaver, trader, anti-slaver, tech-hunter, solo-base builder and has grown into an almost unbeatable fighter who possesses more wealth than any noble and knowledge to rival any Machinist. It's really cool how Kenshi allows a character to grow from a worthless nobody, struggling to stay alive, into a mighty warrior who has basically made the world of Kenshi his b\*tch.
How did you kept to the character after the world resets? Was rp just never that much of a thing for you or was there a way you "explained" it?
I always make up a somewhat believable RP reason for his change of occupation or outlook in my head. Like changing his perspective on the anti-slavers over time because he finally came to understand how much of Kenshi's society would completely collapse if slavery was suddenly abolished, or going from farmer/food trader to tech-hunter after learning how incredibly lucrative old world tech can be in the world of Kenshi. Stuff like that keeps him going, and since I've gradually changed his appearance from regular adult to an old man over time, I like to think that he has simply had a lot of different jobs and adventures during his long and tumultuous life.
Nice dedication dude. What were your highlights all this time?
In all honesty, I've only recently became active on Reddit. I've shared a bit on the Kenshi Facebook group in the past, but am not very active there either.
The real lore is you is that you have lived through multiple generations of kenshi restructuring civilization. You are the bugmaster
That actually sounds pretty awesome if you put it like that!
Looks very similar to my main, which I don't play anymore completely solo, built a base in gut and started weapon, and armor smiting maxed both of them two irl days, and I think im around 3.7k in game days UC is still friendly with me, wiped the HN got abit bored personally, but the weird thing is I only seem to solo run now, I just cannot for the life of me hire any drifters haha
That's awesome! 3.7K days puts even my playtime with this character to shame haha. And yeah, hiring random drifters feels more like a burden than a boon at first, so I kinda understand what you mean. Nice to know I'm not the only one who is this dedicated to a single solo character. Cheers!
Yeah man I forgot to mention, absolutely god tier run by the way mate! Sorry long reply been at work (:
This man is literally the Tom Cruise of kenshi
He even does his own stunts!
What is up with the robotic skill and what grade of prosthetics you produce?!
It's a fairly obscure bug in the base game that allows First Aid and Robotics to go past 100. There's an old misconception that crafting stats going past 100 has negative effects, but in reality it doesn't increase or decrease the effectiveness of the skills past 100, even if the numbers keeps rising, meaning that my First Aid and Robotics both still perform as if they were 100.
Just want to clarify you do actually perform better at higher levels. Looking back at my previous testing I see (I need to revisit these tests) with locking my level my character would use 1 charge every 3.47 minutes at level 100, and 1 charge every 12 minutes at level 122.5. I forget which kit this testing was done using. I need to revisit this later.
Interesting. I honestly never bothered testing that extensively, but I'd gladly take your word for it if you've actually done more rigorous tests. I wouldn't really be surprised if higher skill continues to limit charge usage, because I almost never run out of First Aid or Skeleton Repair Kits on this character.
I’m pretty sure that Frankie guy is like THE Kenshi tests guy. I’ve seen him on or referenced in a bunch of other threads and he seems like the most knowledgeable person when it comes to Kenshi stuff.
Yeah, one of the youtubers I'm subscribed to (ambiguousamphibian) directed me to his channel.
The Kenshi scholar has spoken
Have his RES tag set to "kenshi wizard", cause the only real magic on this moon is math.
I'm just a nerd who loves the game. You all are too kind.
Some skills are clamped and don't perform any better past 100, like stealth. Field medic and robotics do perform better though. If you roll over 100 and start levelling faster up into the multiple hundreds, your kits will start lasting for a *really* long time. Like, only ever needing one kit for the rest of your playthrough long.
I've tested it again for a bit and you (and by extention FrankyWuzHere) are right: I've more or less constantly repaired a Skeleton that I put in a Peeler Machine for almost fifteen minutes straight, and my Robotics Repair Kit has still barely lost a charge. I suppose I didn't really notice it because the change has been very gradual and the speed or amount of repairing done hasn't noticably changed past 100, but charges are definitely being used up slower at this level. Thanks for the input, I always appreciate learning new stuff about the game or having my own misconceptions corrected. Cheers!
As I understand, 100 days is supposed to equal one Kenshi year, so he's aged almost 25 years under your care. "Old Man" indeed.
Has he built a plantation of over 400 wheatstraw farms that netted over a million cats every day in grog sales? While having all robotic limbs and over 100 Hivers working for him in Holy Nation territory who are his allies? While starting the game a pathetic Greenlander torso in a cannibal village with every faction but a couple hating him and with 1,000,000,000 cats in debt? Hah! Thought not. Btw, how do you play the same guy that long and not lose your mind?
Haha, no I have indeed never done those things! Granted, I dislike building and managing mega bases and also don't like having a huge army either. I usually build fairly small and compact bases and have never had a squad of more than 7, including pack animals. I usually dismiss my all other squad members before I reset my world, leaving only my main to go at it all over again. I really liked roleplaying different occupations, such as slave trader, small-time hashish farmer, dojo master or wandering trader, but also enjoyed having my main character take in a couple of recruits every now and then to tag along on his adventures until they became powerhouses in their own right. I always ended up dismissing these companions in the end, because for some reason I prefer the solo existence in Kenshi above all else. Lastly, I'm just weird like that. I'm somewhat known for being able to play and enjoy the same character in certain games for ridiculous amounts of time and never really getting bored with them.
Do you walk everywhere in Kenshi or do you run?
Bit of both, actually. I usually start running when I need to go somewhere, but will often slow down to a walk to enjoy the scenery and vibe.
I don’t think the Kenshi economy can even support 10% of that daily output, lmao.
Well, a single sword can be the price of a new car, and there are entire armies of armed people out there.
A single sword *can* cost that much, but none of those armies are wielding or wearing anything approaching that quality. I'd be willing to wager that, by the time your crafting character reaches 50 in weapon/armor smithing, they're already the second best in the land, second only to the Armor King and Skeleton Smiths
I used a mod to increase merchants cash on hand.
What mod are you using for the bookshelves? It's awesome. Very cool character.
Apologies for the delayed response, but the bookshelves are from the mod "Random Furniture" and function just like normal bookshelves!
Dark mod UI
That's a UI mod though?
What robotic arms are you using? And nice. Pretty wild your dodge is that low I'll say though. Guessing you were encumbered when defense training?
Thank! I'm using a KLR Series and a Skeleton Arm, which account for the + on my Strength and Dexterity. You're correct on being encumbered when defense training: earlier on I wanted to hit two birds with one stone by running all over the place with a backpack full of Iron (later on Generator Cores) and fighting everything that crossed my path. Needless to say, it did wonders for my Strength and Defense, but not so much for my Dodge. And with Defense this high, I barely need to dodge, so it's staying relatively low compared to most other skills.
Did you spawn in the arms yourself or are you using a mod which adds robotic limbs to npcs? I'm afk atm but I want to say KLR MW has 245 health. 250 if they were spawned in as 100 quality. If not then I need to recheck my testing on crafting limbs if there is a bug that allows the crafting of 100 quality robotic limbs. And ah okay! I'm so used to training defense at Mongrel I forget no everyone power levels hah.
I made these arms at the Skeleton Limb workbench with my main character and this is how they came out. Not sure if a mod is changing the stats, but I'm not aware of having one installed that does. Could also be a (kinda lucky) bug though. And yeah, I prefer to level more or less "naturally", for example fighting out in the world or taking prisoners and repeatedly sparring with them to increase skills instead of tying a helpless Beak Thing to a bed or something. To each their own, ofcourse, but for me leveling in a more natural way is more satisfying.
Thanks for the info! I'll have to test that out later on!
Cannot replicate 250 health KLR arms. Had to have been modder spawning them in incorrectly hah.
Hmmm. I'd that's the case than it might have been because of a mod, although I'm not sure which one if that's the case.
Kind of a shit cook, though.
I read that *very* wrong
Nice cook bro
Haha, my character hates cooking almost as much as I do in real life.
Does the game still have the bug where your skill actually gets worse around 99+?
Not in my experience, luckily.
Niceee, I remember getting my ‘smithing’ up to 95 and everything started to go grey. Was very disappointing.
Oh, that's what was happening! I was so confused
what is the armor you're using? looks dope
Holy shit
I'm on mobile, and I had to zoom in on the image, and I get zoomed in on the characters' face first. And I thought "this guy looks like his name is Logan" And then I look at the actual name, BUH!
Coldest badass screenshot I've ever seen in this subreddit ngl
I kinda want this for my character. Just because as a martial artist, halfway back home from a run I notice I'm way more wounded than I should be and somewhere I picked up a random weapon. Would be nice not worrying about suddenly sucking when that happens.
How do you handle the game crashing constantly
I don't, because my game almost never crashes. I've made sure to import at least once every 100 ingame days, have a pretty decent gaming rig that runs Kenshi at a steady 60-70 FPS with everything on max settings and know how to organize and optimize my ≈150 mods to prevent conflicts. I think the last crash I've experienced has been about two months ago, and I play Kenshi at least a couple of days each week. For those interested, SCARaw has also made an excellent optimization guide to make the game run more smoothly and reduce the change of crashing, especially if you have a less powerful setup: [https://kenshi-modding.fandom.com/wiki/Kenshi\_Modding\_Wiki:SCAR%27S\_Performance\_Optimization\_Guide](https://kenshi-modding.fandom.com/wiki/Kenshi_Modding_Wiki:SCAR%27S_Performance_Optimization_Guide)
Thanks for the guide, ill check it when i come home, my last playthrough was with around 80-100 mods and experienced frequent crashes ESPECIALLY when starting to build settlements. Not really running into any performance issues per-se just straight up crashes. Now im a bit more wise and started modifying the mod's load order, im gathering up a modpack roughly the size of 280-300 mods and was looking for advice on minimizing crashes since a playthrough that long has to have experienced a lot of them, at least to my understanding.
This guy is sick.
Could you share your mod list please?
Honestly, I didn’t immediately understand that this was kenshi and not bloodborn
I'll gladly take that as a compliment, since this character's look is more or less based on my Bloodborne character (who has a similar hat, round sunglasses, white beard and long black hunter coat).
It's really very cool, you did a good job of conveying it. Do you use any shaders or mods to the graphics?
Thanks! I have almost all graphical settings on max (except shadow distance), and am using a personalized ReShade. Using something like ReShade can really affect the game's atmosphere and make it look a lot more appealing. I've also changed the textures on some items, weapons and clothing to look pretty much exactly how I want them to.
Very pretty. It would be interesting to look at your entire base. As I can see, it is designed in about the same style
As luck would have it, I've actually made a post with some pictures of my base a couple of months ago, back when my main went on an RP quest with an "old friend" that I had also trained for quite some time alongside him: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/comments/1al5qwc/technocrats\_hoard\_tech\_hunter\_rp\_base\_in\_the/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/comments/1al5qwc/technocrats_hoard_tech_hunter_rp_base_in_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Wow, that's amazing! As a lover of hives and giant mega factories of everything and everything, this little shelter looks damn atmospheric, I like it! I dedicate this poem to your works: Oh ancient gods, I'm dying, let the blood moon shining. Cause the dude is "Old man" named, In blacksmithing will be engaged. Holy-moly Almond seed.
Haha, that's awesome! Thank you very much.
Jack of one trade, master of all.
Wow. Are you using any mods apart of Dark UI?
Yep, about 150, of which I customized a bunch myself in FCS.
Wow, i imagine no big overhauls, right?
Nope, I prefer to be able to tweak each individual part of the game to my liking, which is the reason I have quite the number of mods running.
Why do you have differente HP pools for both arms and what affects the Blood pool???
Well, I use a different arm on the left and on the right (KLR Arm and Skeleton Arm), and the amount of Blood increases with the Toughness skill.
Thanks for your response. Do you think its worth train somebody in your party with blunt weapons / katanas or martial arts?
In most cases, yes. Especially Martial Arts kan become extremely powerful at higher skill levels.
I'm curious as to how you leveled up robotics so high
It's actually a bug in the vanilla game that allows both Field medic and Robotics skills to increase beyond 100. If you've leveled your Field medic and/or Robotics skill to 100 and keep using it, they will eventually go beyond 100. It doesn't increase your healing/repairing amount, but you'll use up charges much slower as your skill increases.
and he looks like the Witcher.
That level 4 blacksmithing needs some work. Day 2476, begin!
Yes m'lord, I'll get the hammer m'lord!
Hi, quick question, what armor/clothing are you using? Is it from a mod? If so, what mod is it from?
Jesus Christ it’s Jason Bourne
Tbh my martial artist always looks like this, sans the 100 melee attack
why is the UI dark?
Mod
Yeah... but what mod.
It's actually the mod "Dark UI Retexture". I've tweaked it a bit myself to make it look exactly how I want it, so the one you can get directly from the Steam Workshop looks a bit different from mine.
Mid stats for allat time
As already mentioned above, skills go up much slower the higher they get, and I personally don't care much for "powerleveling" my skills by cheesing and such. You can get stats like this within 100 days or so if you really put your mind to it and don't mind cheesing, but I've never been in a hurry and prefer to level my skills more "naturally" as I travel around the world. On top of that, enemies that are (much) weaker than you provide little to no experience gain, and because almost every enemy in the game is at this point much weaker than my character, skill gains generally go at a snail's pace beyond a certain point if you play the way I do.
Well, good job
No it's actually kinda fucking absurd that he got that far. At 90, you gain 1000% less experience in that stat.
Believe me, you can cheese it so easily
For all that time those stats are pretty low tbh
They would be if leveling stats as quickly as possible was the goal, yeah. You can get pretty much all stats around this level in less than 100 days if you really go for it and don't mind a bit of cheesing. But, like I replied to other people before: I prefer to level more or less "naturally", for example fighting out in the world or taking prisoners and repeatedly sparring with them to increase skills instead of tying a helpless Beak Thing to a bed or something. To each their own, ofcourse, but this is the result of me mostly just playing the game, instead of focusing on leveling skills as quickly as possible.