Kenshi - open-ended sandbox RPG set in a desert world

[hayst]

Kenshi is a game that I want to love but just can't get into because of the issues people posted, how static and soulless (same architecture for almost everyone) parts of the game are make it feel almost pointless to play. I had the most fun starting as a Holy Nation slave and escaping during a shift change at night because the mechanics all came together to make something genuinely fun, interesting, and unique. After the escape, I'm fucking bored. I don't want to play Rimworld and didn't care about Fallout 4 settlements.

Here's hoping those overhaul mods actually come out

Once you start getting a successful settlement going you can do more interesting things in the game like taking on factions and exploring difficult regions. It opens up more which is a shame because not everyone wants to do that level of management. It's possible to buy a property in a city and use that as a decent base, minimizing a lot of the work that goes into that.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The secret to "winning" Kenshi is just craft or buy Samurai armor. That's it, your team is now pretty much unkillable.

 

[Delterius]

The secret to "winning" Kenshi is just craft or buy Samurai armor.

 

[Zanzoken]

Once you start getting a successful settlement going you can do more interesting things in the game like taking on factions and exploring difficult regions. It opens up more which is a shame because not everyone wants to do that level of management. It's possible to buy a property in a city and use that as a decent base, minimizing a lot of the work that goes into that.

Yep, either will work. I used to always settle in town but after having done both now, I actually think building a base is easier. Because you can extract all of the essentials from the environment with just basic tech, and the raids give your characters steady combat experience in a relatively controlled manner (assuming you settle in a safe area away from cannibals, fogmen, and other enemies who will kill you).

But yeah, once your characters reach a certain level of ability, you can set about tackling the high level goals you want to achieve with your game. Speaking of, my team is getting there. Here is a glamour shot, just because.

Spoiler

I went with a little bit of LARP on the gear selection. As mentioned in the thread, samurai armor is probably the best, despite the penalties that come with it. But I like the look of the armored rags and faceplate, and that's the Shek style. The armor is all masterwork except for the chainmail, because that takes forever to craft and even at 90+ armoursmith skill, the chance of a drop is only 1 in 4. I will get it before we go to fight the Bugmaster but didn't want to go to the effort just yet.

You can see my guys are getting up there in terms of combat skill. This group can successfully defeat the raids we get now, which includes 15 to 20 Band of Bones or Kral's Chosen. I messed up a little bit by not developing their dexterity early on. I forgot that you should really have your guys use katanas for the early- and mid-game, so that their dex scales appropriately. Then you can pivot to heavy weapons or whatever you want.

Also I should confess I've been using the 5X experience mod this playthrough, just to cut down on the grind. It sounds excessive, but what you see here took about 40 hours of playtime, and is still not really an endgame level party. Kenshi vanilla just involves a fuck ton of grinding, and as someone who's already played the game for hundreds of hours, I would rather speed things along a bit.

 

[hayst]

Once you start getting a successful settlement going you can do more interesting things in the game like taking on factions and exploring difficult regions. It opens up more which is a shame because not everyone wants to do that level of management. It's possible to buy a property in a city and use that as a decent base, minimizing a lot of the work that goes into that.

Yep, either will work. I used to always settle in town but after having done both now, I actually think building a base is easier. Because you can extract all of the essentials from the environment with just basic tech, and the raids give your characters steady combat experience in a relatively controlled manner (assuming you settle in a safe area away from cannibals, fogmen, and other enemies who will kill you).

But yeah, once your characters reach a certain level of ability, you can set about tackling the high level goals you want to achieve with your game. Speaking of, my team is getting there. Here is a glamour shot, just because.

Spoiler

I went with a little bit of LARP on the gear selection. As mentioned in the thread, samurai armor is probably the best, despite the penalties that come with it. But I like the look of the armored rags and faceplate, and that's the Shek style. The armor is all masterwork except for the chainmail, because that takes forever to craft and even at 90+ armoursmith skill, the chance of a drop is only 1 in 4. I will get it before we go to fight the Bugmaster but didn't want to go to the effort just yet.

You can see my guys are getting up there in terms of combat skill. This group can successfully defeat the raids we get now, which includes 15 to 20 Band of Bones or Kral's Chosen. I messed up a little bit by not developing their dexterity early on. I forgot that you should really have your guys use katanas for the early- and mid-game, so that their dex scales appropriately. Then you can pivot to heavy weapons or whatever you want.

Also I should confess I've been using the 5X experience mod this playthrough, just to cut down on the grind. It sounds excessive, but what you see here took about 40 hours of playtime, and is still not really an endgame level party. Kenshi vanilla just involves a fuck ton of grinding, and as someone who's already played the game for hundreds of hours, I would rather speed things along a bit.

Color coordination is end game content. You know your squad has it good in Kenshi when they start matching.

 

[MerchantKing]

A quiz for you all. When a Holy Paladin is referring to a "creature of darkness" what is he referring to?
A. A hiver
B. A Skeleton
C. A Shek
D. A woman

 

[hayst]

A quiz for you all. When a Holy Paladin is referring to a "creature of darkness" what is he referring to?
A. A hiver
B. A Skeleton
C. A Shek
D. A woman

I assumed Shek but I could see B or D.

 

[mondblut]

A quiz for you all. When a Holy Paladin is referring to a "creature of darkness" what is he referring to?
A. A hiver
B. A Skeleton
C. A Shek
D. A woman

D, of course. The others are nowhere as bad.

 

[illuknisaa]

The secret to "winning" Kenshi is just craft or buy Samurai armor. That's it, your team is now pretty much unkillable.

The real secret to winning Kenshi is to get your guys cyber legs and crossbows.

 

[MerchantKing]

A quiz for you all. When a Holy Paladin is referring to a "creature of darkness" what is he referring to?
A. A hiver
B. A Skeleton
C. A Shek
D. A woman

D, of course. The others are nowhere as bad.

And we have our winner.

 

[Perkel]

Kenshi is a game that I want to love but just can't get into because of the issues people posted, how static and soulless (same architecture for almost everyone) parts of the game are make it feel almost pointless to play. I had the most fun starting as a Holy Nation slave and escaping during a shift change at night because the mechanics all came together to make something genuinely fun, interesting, and unique. After the escape, I'm fucking bored. I don't want to play Rimworld and didn't care about Fallout 4 settlements.

Here's hoping those overhaul mods actually come out

As someone who had similar issues. Game is very stealthily good. Much like everyone after initial trying I started to delve into mods bringing new stuff etc. and it was fine but something "wasn't right".

Turns out that Kenshi biggest soul is the lonesome world it has. The moment you add stuff and fix it it looses that charm. IT is those little moments that make up most of what Kenshi is good about.

 

[Zanzoken]

I conquered the Bugmaster and allied with the Shek. The journey into Arach and fighting a fuck ton of spiders was scary and cool, although the Bugmaster's tower itself was a bit underwhelming.

Mild spoiler.

Spoiler

I think one thing that annoys me about the Bugmaster is that the Shek act like he is this undefeatable final boss, but they have the resources to easily defeat him. If my party of 6 could take him out, then the Stone Golem and the Five Invincibles could too. To say nothing of them actually rolling in there with a 30-person strong war party and kicking ass.

Anyway, I guess I need to figure out what to do next. I am now enemies with the Holy Nation, so thinking maybe we'll try to conquer Stack (which I read somewhere will cause the Shek to also take over the Hub). But I don't really want to get in a protracted war with the HN right now, so after that we'll probably go explore the Ashlands and other remote parts of the world.

 

[Beastro]

newbs... https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1879268985 :D

M | Shakaama
14 Nov, 2022 @ 8:58am



YOU ALMOST GOT MY ENTIRE CRUSADE KILLED. you included women as crusaders. I went to turn in one of the bosses and luckily I only spoke to an inquisitor as a woman, and he ignored me. it just so happened i didn't speak to lord phoenix, but I was still attacked for having women there.

 

[Thane Solus]

newbs... https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1879268985 :D

M | Shakaama
14 Nov, 2022 @ 8:58am



YOU ALMOST GOT MY ENTIRE CRUSADE KILLED. you included women as crusaders. I went to turn in one of the bosses and luckily I only spoke to an inquisitor as a woman, and he ignored me. it just so happened i didn't speak to lord phoenix, but I was still attacked for having women there.

If you are allied with them they dont care. As for prisoners when talking with inquisitors, u have to have a male to do it. Or just put them directly in the prison but u wont get reputation.

 

[Mauman]

The secret to "winning" Kenshi is just craft or buy Samurai armor. That's it, your team is now pretty much unkillable.

Until you take a gutshot from a turret and fall in one hit due to the armor not fully covering that area. Even layered with other armor (like chain), it's impossible to completely cover your abdomen with samurai armor. Hits WILL get through.

un/holy armor + artificial arms + extra arms in pack in the unlikely scenario one of your arms get's busted/severely damaged is the way to go. Yes, you can even change them out in combat.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Samurai Armor has by far the most dramatic effect on survivability and it's very low effort to obtain. Sawing troops' limbs off and turning them into cyborgs is effective too but requires substantially higher infrastructure and resource accumulation, giving it a lower overall ROI.

 

[MerchantKing]

I'm a UC kind of guy. Specifically a Trader's guild supporter. I play as a skeleton BTW.

 

[Mauman]

Samurai Armor has by far the most dramatic effect on survivability and it's very low effort to obtain. Sawing troops' limbs off and turning them into cyborgs is effective too but requires substantially higher infrastructure and resource accumulation, giving it a lower overall ROI.

To a degree. It's just always been my experience with samurai armor for my peeps to get hit in the gut, which also makes them weaker. Plus cyber limb damage is INFINITELY easier to deal with than gut damage.

I've just always preferred Crab Armor* till cyber time then Holy armor. Besides, it's not THAT hard to do if you know what is needed. It's a time honored tradition in my armies to take a training holiday up in Mongrel. Hear they throw great dinner parties up there. So good they really increase your endurance. Also, gives me something to burn the mountain of cats I generate on (both in Mongrel and Black Desert).

And besides, that doesn't change my point that you're going to get to a point in the game where your characters CAN be gimped (or even one-shot) by a lucky gut shot from a turret, King, or cat-lon...or something else seriously nasty

*Yeah, they're less effective in combat, but they last longer and don't take major pain to 2 of the 3 worst spots.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Are those plated leather shirts no good or what?

 

[Mauman]

Are those plated leather shirts no good or what?

Oh, they're fine. The issue being is they don't have 100% coverage either. Though it wouldn't help that much if they did considering how hard some things can hit in the end as the damage reduction for armored undershirts is WAY less than chest armor itself.

The way armor works (well, to boil it down as it's surprisingly weird), is that armor as a percent chance to work. If it does, THEN the damage reduction kicks in. Then, if you have more than one armor piece protecting that area (like a chain shirt), then the same process happens with whatever damage is left (or all of it if the first layer didn't do it's job).

Samurai armor has only an 85% coverage of the stomach, one of the most likely places to get hit in combat (someone did a spreadsheet years ago to show how often certain parts got hit, and stomach was #1 or close enough that it doesn't matter). So that means you have a 15% chance of your awesome samurai armor doing absolutely nothing every time they get hit in the stomach.

Crab and (un)holy armor have 100% coverage in this area. They do come with their own downsides though. Crab armor hurts combat ability and holy armor has less coverage on the arms (note, that samurai armor doesn't completely protect arms either, but it is a lot more than holy armor I'll give it that), but cyber arms practically remove that downside once you get enough resources to kit out your shitkickers with the best that technology has to offer (or at least, above decent arms).

edit - oh, and every time a fairly hard hit goes through the stomach, your samurai clad ass will actually double over for a bit, allowing for free hits from your enemies. This almost never happens with crab or holy armor.

 

[Perkel]

Meh, toughness is the most important stat, more than armor. It gives straight up damage reduction on top of armor.
At 1 you get like +50% damage, at ~50 points you get around 0% and with each point above 50 you get reduction in damage like -5 -10% etc.
The important part is that this is for base damage before your armor kicks in. So If you get 50 damage you get 100 damage at 1 toughness. This is where those holes in defense can one shot you.

Second most important part is quality of armor. I'd rather wear standard quality leather armor than shoddy samurai armor. Because that gives me ability to use larger heavier weapon which dishes out more damage which means less time to kill which means less chance to get KO and huge bonus in group combat which is most of early combat.

And in world of Kenshi best defense is just run away or stealth.

 

[Mauman]

Meh, toughness is the most important stat, more than armor. It gives straight up damage reduction on top of armor.
At 1 you get like +50% damage, at ~50 points you get around 0% and with each point above 50 you get reduction in damage like -5 -10% etc.
The important part is that this is for base damage before your armor kicks in. So If you get 50 damage you get 100 damage at 1 toughness. This is where those holes in defense can one shot you.

Second most important part is quality of armor. I'd rather wear standard quality leather armor than shoddy samurai armor. Because that gives me ability to use larger heavier weapon which dishes out more damage which means less time to kill which means less chance to get KO and huge bonus in group combat which is most of early combat.

And in world of Kenshi best defense is just run away or stealth.

Best way to power level endurance is to give your boys and girls over to the fogmen. Get's your endurance up to the high 50's/mid 60's and now they'll be ready for a sweet set of cyber limbs.

Skeletons will have to do it the old fashioned way. Though stripping them naked and having the fogmen beat them to an inch of their lives is a pretty good way to go about it.

 

[Perkel]

Another good way to get toughness up and skills is to set your outpost in Shek territory. Sheks are best neighbors often coming beating living shit out of everything and taking nothing just to help downtrodden poor fucking farmers shape up. And they are often in their 60s on all stats which means getting single hit on them or block can increase instantly low lever character few times.

 

[mondblut]

Best way to power level endurance is to give your boys and girls over to the fogmen. Get's your endurance up to the high 50's/mid 60's and now they'll be ready for a sweet set of cyber limbs.

Nah. First you get a sweet set of cyber limbs, or maybe not so sweet, but it should be a leg. Then you keep taking that leg off in the company of an enemy (a bunch of beak things worked fine for me), dropping unconscious for a few seconds, then reattaching the leg and getting up. It gets you to 60 within minutes.

 

[orcinator]

You can autism grind inefficiently or efficiently, the problem is still that there's nothing pressuring you aside from your own feeling of tedium.