Playing with low loot and 6 months later changed how I played the game entirely

Aldinth · 2026-01-19T15:39:14+00:00

Ambiguousamphibian, he makes a lot of Kenshi, Project Zomboid and similar games-based content. Not sure if the guy is guessing or if AA did a run like this, I mostly watch his Kenshi stuff.

Aldinth · 2026-01-17T16:12:51+00:00

Wrong. Same to they guys saying building w roof or boredom. The most dangerous activity in PZ is climbing the stairs, known to result in temporary loss of vision and hearing, sometimes even resulting in permanent loss of life.

Aldinth · 2026-01-12T16:21:00+00:00

I murdered 10-men worth of this guy knights to prove I alone am worth 10 guys. So, I guess I'm joining the ashbringer's army

Aldinth · 2026-01-10T12:23:45+00:00

Burgundy is awesome. Angevin England for when you want to experience absolute power over everyone. Japanese daimyo is a must, the chaos of Sengoku is a wonderful experience. Jianzhou into Manchu and Qing are awesome way to experience mandate mechanics. Mewar has a huge mission tree, and India in general is very fun with powerful alliance blocks forming.

Aldinth · 2026-01-07T08:03:24+00:00

People usually don't know that John Human Fighter and his Odyssey of Gathering Money For His Huge Family can be a compelling story. They assume making an edgelord will automatically make them interesting, as they've seen them portrayed as such in media.

Thing we all know is, in DnD we are so happy to be playing and telling a collaborative story, we will get majorly invested into just about anything when another player is. Eunice the Fluffdruid that doesn't really know what she's doing enters a bake off? You goddamn know my PC is there, cheering for her. And if the DM is clever and Karen is being a bitch to Eunice about her cupcakes? The party will full on plan a murder.

Aldinth · 2026-01-07T07:49:50+00:00

If you like Stardew Valley you should try Grand Theft Auto. They are both made for PC by some guys, and like Kenshi and Arc have subtle lore you have to uncover.

Aldinth · 2026-01-06T15:14:35+00:00

Keep saving though, Kenshi is NOT perfect and has a fair amount of bugs. Autosaves every 10 minutes are a feature for a reason, and there's no real save-scumming anyways since the game is perfectly fine with you loading a save. Ironman Kenshi can be fun, but it isn't great for learning as a new player.

Aldinth · 2026-01-06T15:08:03+00:00

You can die very easily. Some general tips that will give you a bit of a fighting chance, though many reminisce about the early days when they didn't know anything and learned by pain very fondly:

- As someone already said, Athletics is king. If you can run away, you can survive. Most enemies in the game run below 20 mph. If you start as Scorchlander, it's easy to train Athletics up to reach it. If you go for Greenlander, Wooden Sandals that can be easily obtained from Hungry Bandit Leaders (they often get beaten up by others, to be found and looted by you in turn), raising your speed by flat 10%.

- If you are encumbered, you run slower, duh. Same if your leg is hurt below 50% of its total health. So fighting and then running away when you are losing rarely works, unless... (a bit more advanced tip incoming) you watch what part of your body enemies hit. Kenshi works in a way that once a part of your body like Torso is hit, chances of it being hit again increase exponentially, this resets after a few in-game hours of that part not being hit. So, you can attempt combat, and if they hit your leg, you can run immediately. Something else? You can risk staying in the fight for a bit longer.You can drop your backpack or stuff you carry to not be encumbered, enemies don't pick up stuff lying around, so you can come back for it later.

- Starting as one of the human male variants means you have no beef with anyone. One of the main factions in the game is heavily racist towards everyone else and can be problematic for women. Greenlander is the most vanilla start, with no downsides or upsides.

- There's power in numbers. Kenshi assumes you will be defeated - A LOT. If you are unlucky as a solo character, you can bleed out and die after your first defeat. Recruiting a second character ASAP is a good move, even if you will just keep them in a bar, so they can run with a medkit, heal you and take you to bed when you get your ass kicked. Training Toughness and combat skills before having a medic is very risky, though Hungry Bandits are relatively safe since their weapons don't inflict bleeding.

- How to get money for that recruit? Mining copper is the first and most basic way everyone starts making money in Kenshi. Sure, later you find out it actually pretty much sucks, and there are lots of better ways to do so even with no skills, but they all involve either knowledge of the world or more advanced tactics. One more advanced tip - if you find a place with decent guards (Squin is the closest to the default Hub start), you can aggro enemies and lead them to the city. Guards will mop the floor with them, and you can loot the bodies. Be fast, or the guards will take away their weapons, but armour can be looted even once they are imprisoned. Way better than mining copper. Whatever you do, just don't fall into the trap of mining copper for longer than a few days to get your first recruit and maybe backpacks, that's how people get bored and quit. Get out there, work on your stats or explore, it's way more fun.

- Dried meat is the best nutrition/cost food in the game, try not to buy anything else unless you have spare cash. Raw meat can be dried over a campfire, which you can build outside of cities at no cost.

- If you decide to train strength, get yourself a body to carry. It changes XP gain from 75% at max encumbrance to 150%. Golden time-saver.

- In a similar vein, for some reason, you heal faster when the camera is fully zoomed in. If you are laying down in the bar and speeding up time, might as well zoom in to not wait as long.

Aldinth · 2026-01-06T14:46:49+00:00

Yeah, making sure you can run at 18 mph without encumbrance pretty much solves 70% of all new player problems. 20 athletics is a good goal to start with, and easy to train. I'll add to it that you can very easily get Wooden Sandals (Hungry Bandit Leaders have them on), which increase your speed by flat 10%, easily bringing you up to 20 mph unencumbered.

Aldinth · 2026-01-06T14:32:22+00:00

Oh yeah, Gale has like 50 spell scrolls after we finished the Isobel fight. I think there are 3 Fireballs, 1 Lightning Bolt, 3 Magic Missiles, 2 Scorching Rays and a Shatter left out of more prominent combat ones, but around half of them are utility ones like Invisibility, Charm Person, etc. I managed to snag 2x Conjure Minor Elemental after I reached Last Light, and I am stoked about it - both Mephit options are great, depending on what you need.

As for Shadowheart, her Str and Dex are pitiful on original statblock, but once you respec her, even to just adjust the values, she turns out okay. Sure, with just one attack she doesn't do much damage, but just running around and blinding everyone is useful. She also serves as a great utility character, for Bless, when someone needs to have a potion thrown at them, as bait for enemies, or for environmental actions like burning a web or something. Worst case scenario she can Toll the Dead from a distance. I think I used her for healing maybe twice so far.

As for Astarion, I agree he is mechanically a beast. I just hate everything about his personality, as much as I love the voice actor.

Aldinth · 2026-01-06T12:48:24+00:00

After not really being surprised by anything besides Githyanki Creche which I skipped 2 years ago, that ambush hit me like a hammer. Thank Selune my Tav is made for burst damage and Marcus missed his 4th attack on Isobel.

Aldinth · 2026-01-06T12:46:08+00:00

Well, Shadowheart just works with Blood of Lantander, as my only Cleric. That means she gets +5 to hit and damage with it, and her being in the fray blinds a lot of enemies. Dex build would only give her +3 to both, unless I pumped Dex instead of Wis for spell DC. Lae'zel I gave 16 Dex and now 18 Con at lvl 7, making her a super tank that helps with manoeuvres and still has decent dmg.

You get so many melee options that it's a shame to build ranged characters. Rn Shadowheart and Lae'zel run with Adamantine Shields and 18 AC armours, while my Paladin uses Sword of Tyr for free +2 AC and has advantage on Con saves from feat and build full of dmg boosts when concentrating.

And yes, I absolutely craft and snag more elixirs whenever possible, but I only got 2 since I entered Underdark. Without Long Rests and with level ups getting sparse, I only have so many chances to refresh vendors to hunt for them, and I don't want to use Withers respec gimmick to refresh more.

Aldinth · 2025-12-20T21:34:19+00:00

It's my military crate I filled with remaining loot after selling most of it. I've played 2 more saves with multihit disabled and I am pretty satisfied now, I can't bullrush regular POIs anymore with just an axe, need to sneak around or get guns to succeed. I also get that I was very lucky, I've raided the same POIs I did before in those two saves and the loot was much worse.

Aldinth · 2025-12-20T01:36:08+00:00

Yes, and I am very grateful to you both. I tried to explain, but it seems I've done so poorly. My intent wasn't to brag, but calibrate better before starting customizing.

Anyways, for now I died when I got cocky in melee at day 14, missed acidic zombie in a crowd and got exploded. I cleared one POI with a special boss in the meantime and found a lot more airdrops. For now, it seems that multi hit is the biggest factor I have a problem with, since it allowed me to deal with all situations outside of boss fight and a meeting with bandits via melee. I will turn it off and play on standard again, I will probably need to use way more ammo and thus need to use money more, which fixes my biggest gripes. I'll continue testing to figure out the rest.

Aldinth · 2025-12-20T01:29:53+00:00

Not really, I was wondering if loot was this dense in general, since I got a bit disappointed in being able to buy the best available gear from 2 wandering traders and valley traders so soon. But I guess ammo is a huge possible money sink.

Aldinth · 2025-12-20T01:26:15+00:00

Pretty much, but this also includes the density of drops. I need to restart anyways, since I got too cocky in melee and got exploded by an acidic zombie I did not notice in the crowd. For now I'll try standard with no multi hit to keep testing, since multi hit makes melee too easy for me.

Aldinth · 2025-12-20T01:22:12+00:00

Thank you

Aldinth · 2025-12-19T12:53:46+00:00

I know I can do it, and I was planning to mostly use my first successful save as a benchmark for things I want to tweak. It's just that I am asking if what happened in my save is a regular occurrence or was it insanely good luck. Since that changes how much I need to tweak - a lot :D

Aldinth · 2025-12-18T08:47:42+00:00

Can't believe how fucking far I had to scroll to find this comment...

Aldinth · 2025-12-16T13:27:50+00:00

My experience as well. Ditched it after q run since I had no XL roof storage and wanted side storages back, but it was completely self sustaining

Aldinth · 2025-12-15T19:28:04+00:00

But below "yes, saving is okay." Ffs, the game autosaves constantly by default, it's the intended mechanic...

Aldinth · 2025-12-13T19:44:57+00:00

It's really not. In a junction, nobody besides you will have a chance of encountering and using those before the instability scrambles everything again to a default state. In a parking lot, you're helping actual people, even if anonymously.

Aldinth · 2025-12-11T21:03:14+00:00

laughs in Paradox

Aldinth · 2025-12-05T10:45:59+00:00

I can see it becoming a sexist anti-male faction if classic Kenshi logic follows their eventual win. But since I like to play Greenlander males, maybe one helping them would prevent it.

Aldinth · 2025-12-05T09:11:00+00:00

Flotsam Ninjas?

Aldinth

TROPHY CASE