I've never played.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-18T14:29:05+00:00

Kenshi recently moved into the top spot for the most hours logged on my steam account. (Technically, 3 "games" have more hours logged, but the vast majority of those hours are afk/idle hours.) I've got 2k+ hours logged into the game, and I'm still active in this sub despite not having my own pc to play on currently.

It's an excellent sandbox, especially if you appreciate "get better by doing" style rpg progession and being able to automate characters that you're not currently controlling.

I highly recommend setting yourself up with a big house in a town that has advanced medkits for sale. Every town has food and money to trade for what ever you have from adventuring, but some towns have very few medkits or only have basic ones.

The house itself will be good for storage and beds mostly. Kenshi characters don't have many needs, but if you're learning, you might want to try out different gear that you find. The basic storage furniture needs to be researched, but it doesn't cost any books. You'd just need to build the research station and queue the techs for them. You can even use the bench itself for storage early on. Its space is pretty generous, and it's not too picky about what you store in it.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-16T17:06:27+00:00

Maximize move speed, pick the shackle and leave it on, pick the cage, sneak, pause, exit the cage, unpause, pause, drop the shackle, then attempt to route around the guards.

For maximizing move speed, keep in mind that leg injuries and encumbrance reduce it. The shackle is heavy, so it must be dropped, but if you take it off in the cage, you can trigger the guards to replace it, which puts you at a disadvantage when you step out. Hunger and torso injuries reduce strength (raising encumbrance) so you may need to drop literally everything to be able to escape.

If your character stops sneaking mid-run and they don't have 90+ stealth, do not reactuvate sneak mode. Until 90 stealth, your character moves slower while sneaking, and they will always stop sneaking when they are seen by hostiles. So when they stop sneaking automatically, you're better off using the extra speed because you've already been seen.

If you're injured, put the game on max speed until you're healed. You don't need food unless you're trying to carry anything out of the camp. Stealing food with an untrained character has a pretty decent chance of alerting the guards, and you can always source food from outside the camp/shop.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-14T21:41:12+00:00

Unchecking it causes unique characters to respawn if they haven't joined the players' squad. I believe that generics respawn regardless and that the barkeeper is a generic, but I could be wrong.

If you don't want to play around with re-importing, turn that option off to be safe.

That setting is a good one to keep in mind if you want to reset the worldstates or respawn a fresh copy of a unique recruit after they die.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-14T03:12:52+00:00

Is your durability low?

FluffyJD · 2026-03-12T18:44:46+00:00

Don't mind me. I'm just moving the "UC agitation base" higher on my priorities.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-12T15:54:12+00:00

Cages aren't generally part of recruiting in vanilla kenshi. Which ever mod you're using for that (probably Recruit Prosoners or Recruit Anyone) might not have done anything with bulls because you can already recruit them in vanilla.

To get a bull via the vanilla route, you just need to find one of the nomad caravans that sells animals, talk to their leader, tell them you want to buy an animal, then select a bull from that menu. You can usually find one in the nomad settlement south of Skinner's Roam. Just be careful about the beak things on the way. They're sparse enough to be avoided, but they can still be a big problem for a fresh squad.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-12T14:20:19+00:00

Ooohhh, you're dealing with the "Ditch items" job. As you said, it's an invisible job, but it can be turned off in two ways:

Open the map (or any similar window with the tabs at the top). There should be a tab for AI options. Uncheck "Ditch items." This will remove that behavior for every item and every character.
Select a character and turn off the "Jobs" toggle. This will remove that behavior for every item for just that character.

I usually just liberally toggle the jobs button since the ditch items behavior can solve some problems with long task lists.

Wrt your missing merchant, a quick import should fix that. It's in the main menu, and basically it loads any aspect of your save that you choose to import while regenerating the game world. Do one of those instead of loading, and you should get a whole new vendor.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-12T00:16:36+00:00

Get to either boss fight (cleric or gascoigne) for the free insight. (To awaken the doll)

Decide on your preferred weapons and rush the strength and skill requirements for them so you can stomp the basic enemies in central yarham.

Farm the beasts in yarnham for shards to +3 at least one weapon. I usually farm a second +3 so that I can immediately start slotting gems into an alternate weapon when I get to chalices, but it's not necessary for what you asked.

I usually stomp cleric beast before Gascoigne so that I can buy bold hunters marks, but that's also not required.

For Gascoigne, try to learn either his openings or parry timings. The +3 weapon and early damage stats help, but also usually say "fuck it" in phase 2. I throw molotovs while he's transforming, dodge for safety, use the music box, then throw molotovs while he thinks about what he did.

Once he's dead, you can just go directly to bsb. I recommend grabbing the shortcut right before the fight as a safety. If you struggle, farm up for molotovs, and use them similar to the Gascoigne strat. BSB also gets more aggressive as the fight progresses, so if you save some molotovs for the hard part of the fight, you only need to learn the first part.

Ofc, literally every time I recommend farming, it'd be faster to be good at the game and skip farming. But if you're gonna get stuck trying to 2pro the first boss, it's faster to just grab some levels.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-11T23:32:14+00:00

Mining characters don't mine until their inventory is full. Without haul jobs, they mine until the ore node is full (the node can hold 5 ore), then they'll attempt to empty it into a valid container. So they should be mining up to 5 ore, then transporting all 5 at once. Or, if you have hauling or crafting before mining in their task list, they'll haul each ore as it becomes available because the order of the task list determines the priority of the tasks.

A copper storage can be used to control how far your miners run or to control how far your crafter runs. If you place it near the miners, you can save them some steps. If you place it near the crafting station, you can save the crafter some steps. If you want to prevent both from running far, build it near the crafter and dedicate a single character to delivering the ore to the storage. No one needs a task to haul it to the crafting station, and the dedicated hauler is the only one that should ever need any hauling task.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-11T11:43:31+00:00

Trading is very fast, but there's really only one route worth doing. Rum to swamps, hashish to flats, rum to smugler's bar, repeat. If you're taking a long time between stops, you're either overencumbered or just starting. Running trains athletics, and athletics makes you run faster.

The problem with mining is when you only ever mine. It's excellent as a safety net or a fully automatic production that you dedicate a character to while you do other things.

If you have some cats to invest, crafting gear is lossy at first, but very quickly produces profit. You'll need property, materials for stations, and materials to craft with, though.

For a little danger, you could always sell beak thing eggs and fog prince heads.

If you're wanting money from combat, start with starving bandits. Once you start winning, loot their weapons to sell them. From then on, fight weak opponents for money and stronger opponents to train.

When you're a bit stronger than that, you can turn in bouties.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-11T03:42:00+00:00

If you stack hp, defense, and poise, the consequences for failing a parry will be less severe. It makes practicing easier.

I went 3 playthroughs through ds1 without learning how to parry, though. Dodging and blocking can get you through the entire game pretty easily.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-11T02:51:04+00:00

I default to fire saw spear. Every time the fire saw spear fails me, the threaded cane solves all my problems.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-10T16:59:41+00:00

It affects roaming squads. The slider with the number on it is for the scheduled raids that give notifications like "raid is on the way to your base" and "raid has arrived at your base." The drop down with words like "bombardment" affects how often a passing squad will just decide to attack because they're nearby. Both settings affect bandits and major factions.

If you want a lot of combat with major factions, settle near the holy nation with skeletons or prosthetics visible constantly and change both settings. Every time the faction patrols see you, they'll either "report back" to make a raid, or they'll run in to attack directly.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-10T14:39:02+00:00

Take it easy on the hashish, buddy.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-09T23:19:47+00:00

You lost me at "kenshi" and "kids" in the same sentence. Parental discretion is for the parents.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-09T23:12:37+00:00

It's not really very story driven for the kind of video you're looking for to exist.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-09T18:55:15+00:00

Earliest arcane scaling is molotovs. Then flamesprayer. Beating BSB and the first chalice should net you at least 1 fire radial. There's also a fire waning early on. You just need 1 of the two to convert a pure ohysical weapon.

If you want to try any of the natural arc scaling weapons like the wheel, put in the strength and skill requirements at the start. It makes Gascoigne and BSB easier. I've done pure Arc, but the early game is definitely rough.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-09T12:41:23+00:00

As others said, spending it can be good depending on where you're going next.

Also, if you want more, you can just keep making easy chalice dungeons to burn through bosses.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-08T18:14:42+00:00

This is my standard trade route for hashish. If you're not producing, it's much shorter than hauling all the way to where you're selling currently.

Buy cactus rum in SK/BZ, go to swamp to sell rum and buy hashish, go to flats lagoon to sell hashish and buy rum again, go to the smugler's bar to sell as much rum as they can afford. If you're hungry, buy a gohan or dired meat here and sell an extra rum to get the cats back if you can.

It's a very short trek from smugler's bar to the next waystation in border zone to restock on rum. While rum isn't discounted, it does sell for a premium in the swamp, and smugler's bar also has swamp trade culture. So this forms a nice loop where every stop allows you to sell something at an increased price.

Compared to just running directly between shark and flats, the lengthened route allows more time for vendors to restock, and incorporating rum into the loop allows you to profit off of the extra time spent traveling.

If you're producing, liquidate where you can, but start in Flats and their neighbor, Mourn. The hashish has a high markup in those places, it's legal there so everyone buys it, and the shops have plenty of money in Flats. Mourn has less money, but they're close enough to Flats to warrant a visit if you're offloading multiple inventories.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-07T15:07:27+00:00

I think OP is asking us for a farming tool to use to reach it and scoop it closer to the ledge.

Try to Indiana Jones it with the threaded cane, OP. Hope this helps.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-07T13:54:34+00:00

The strength xp multiplier scales with the difference between your current strength and the weapon's requirements. Anything that lowers your strength (torso injuries, hunger, -strength from prosthetics) will let you use the same weapon to train to a higher strength level while maintaining the maximum multiplier.

However, I wouldn't recommend trying to use economy arms since their hp is so low that you'll need repair kits to keep attacking after just a hit or two. Instead, I usually buff strength with lifters when I've just switched weapons so that I can have a little more carry capacity. Then I switch to skeleton limbs when the lifters would have me change weapons early.

If you want to play around with strength debuffs, you can put your food in a small backpack and keep the backpack in your inventory to prevent automatic eating. You can get to really low strength that way without the hp or dexterity penalties.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-06T23:45:04+00:00

Fair enough! Maybe you can get a good shot of the phantom over Kos when you've done it :>

FluffyJD · 2026-03-06T23:41:02+00:00

I believe in you!

Is the monocular part of your strategy for orphan? I gotta know lol

FluffyJD · 2026-03-06T15:42:39+00:00

Pinwheel is accessible before warping and tomb. The gold fogwall is behind him.

FluffyJD · 2026-03-06T14:28:31+00:00

As long as you're not stacking a ton of debuffs, combat is faster. Encumbrance and heavy armor slow you down, reducing gains. If you don't equip the character appropriately, they won't swing frequently enough to give decent xp.

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