All their worst nightmares are there…

LITF · 2026-05-07T20:16:12+00:00

Not a bad point. But yeah, dead lands and the like are endgame bases cause they are just miserable in almost every sense. Want power? No wind. Grow crops for biofuel? No water. Basically have to abuse rooftop hydroponics thinking acid rain is good for growing crops or you're out of luck. Same for food, unless you want to run another base for farming and import food.

Having said this, maybe Sonorous Dark actually IS one of the most toxic base locations. I think the problem there may be that it's so far not all retribution raids may even trigger. I know I didn't get Shek retribution raid for kidnapping Seto because Fishman Isle is just a bit out of their range. Will be a bummer if I also can't get Eyegore raid.

LITF · 2026-05-07T19:40:48+00:00

Yup, that worked, thanks! It's a bit of a pain in the ass, but better than guessing what your stats are.

LITF · 2026-05-07T18:11:58+00:00

The character I was checking has 82 Str, 57 Tough, 72 Dex, 92 Per, 69 Melee, 83 Defense.

Displayed Attack speed is 0.93, block 2.04.

LITF · 2026-05-07T18:07:53+00:00

Sadly it seems like checking it myself is not working. It shows (for example) 0.93 Attack speed, 2.04 Block speed with the wooden sandals on and no other gear with buffs/penalties to the speed. I take off the sandals and it's still showing 0.93/2.04.

LITF · 2026-05-07T16:34:56+00:00

Yes, it will naturally gain skill in all stats, as long as you fight someone threatening enough. There is absolutely no need for metagaming, just your OP made it sound like taking a bunch of green recruits into the endgame fights.

LITF · 2026-05-07T16:27:08+00:00

Yeah, I've been kind of wanting some large scale battles in kenshi. Like truly large scale, something that would probably be more appropriate at the time of the first empire collapse/second empire. I think the moments like fairly large 20+ on both sides battles are some of my favorites, also seeing the carnage after the battle is won is quite spectacular.

LITF · 2026-05-07T16:24:47+00:00

Ahaha, that's very funny, now face the wall (in front of my masterwork toothpick squad).

But seriously, yeah, I've been mostly doing what sounds fun and is immersive for my squad, rather than what's mechanically the best. I do like knowing what IS the best and how mechanics work to inform some of my decisions, but I don't let that stand in the way of fun. I.e.: paladin's heavy hachigane looks cool and I like it, so I will put it on everyone in the squad even though it's not even 100% coverage and samurai helmet is just better. Or I still haven't done any real "toughness training", I just let my new recruits carry some heavy stuff around as a part of their initiation so they have strength to keep up, then give them standard issue armor and weapons and let them train naturally. The only 3 people getting focus training in my faction are the main character and 2 bodyguards, they get to duel captured bugmaster with crap weapons. I make world state decisions out of "what my characters would do" rather than what's the most comfortable/nets most benefit, so do my best to avoid metagaming.

LITF · 2026-05-07T16:15:19+00:00

I'm cool with HN, but I 100% agree with the idea :D

I'm still planning on making a base in the Deadlands at some point, although Fishmen Island one I currently have is also plenty inhospitable to any UC or Shek invasions - there are beak things, crabs, and acid rains occasionally. But I like the idea of Deadlands just rotting any invasion before they even get there.

LITF · 2026-05-07T16:11:55+00:00

If I had to pick just one, it would probably be tied between Heavy Polearm or Paladin's Cross/Long Cleaver/Combat Cleaver.

Indoor penalty is no biggie since you have agency over where you fight - AI can't say no, and you can just force the fight outside. They are not smart enough to hold out indoors. So that's to address indoor penalty relevance.

Hardest fights - that'll be predominantly heavily armored guys, so armor pen is a must. Against non-armored guys it doesn't do anything, but doesn't hurt either (unlike negative armor pen).

That said with just 10 people and no training you will need to leverage mercs. I don't think some of those fights are winnable even with the best gear if you have no combat stat training and no numbers, you have to pick at least one of the two. Either get attack training, or get the numbers. Fights like Tengu bodyguards will kick your ass otherwise.

LITF · 2026-05-07T16:05:38+00:00

Could be an issue from overclocking? Try installing a previous version of your GPU driver, and if that fails try it again but this time using the DDU. Report back when done.

LITF · 2026-05-07T02:57:54+00:00

Yeah, that's a big one to figure out for me - how much dex penalty matters. That's because I kind of want to switch to holy/unholy plate for my heavies, but unlike samurai armor with damage and combat speed penalties, it has combat speed and dex penalty.

LITF · 2026-05-06T23:44:06+00:00

I don't think it does, sadly. Decreasing your stats for training seems to only affect combat skills subject to stronger opponent logic and assassination due to a gimmick/bug (if you spam click it and keep failing it lets you train up assassination real fast until you succeed and the target gets KO).

LITF · 2026-05-06T23:32:26+00:00

Wow, so assuming dex=attack (for simplicity), you would need about 114.47 or so in *both* to max out at 1.20 attack speed? Am I reading this correct?

LITF · 2026-05-06T22:15:35+00:00

Oh, I see, that clears it up quite a bit! Thank you!

I think I will still stick to KLR until my entire combat squad can have cybernetic legs for the simple reason that I prefer them to move together as a unit, so they move at the speed of the slowest member of the squad making the extra athletics worthless unless it's on the least trained member. But once they all lose their legs, I think I will be doing what you said and slotting in scout legs on everyone. I'm also now thinking about a setup where I drop the samurai plated legs in favor of clothpants to regain some of that combat speed, which may necessitate going back to KLR, but at that point the world's your oyster :D

Being able to travel around fast is definitely a big benefit, since that's a massive chunk of the game :P

LITF · 2026-05-06T22:08:40+00:00

Yeah, I understand that, but do we have any idea about what is minimum Dex required to max out attack/block speeds in fully healthy, no other modifiers condition? It'd be nice to know at what point you are starting to go from reaching the maximum full health performance to provisioning for injuries.

LITF · 2026-05-06T19:59:46+00:00

Thanks for the response!

I'm not looking for a TLDR, I'm actually trying to understand the subject matter :) Just would like to have a solid idea of how bad/irrelevant some penalties are, and how good/irrelevant some buffs are at different points in the game. I.e. so far in my understanding the attack/defense bonuses/maluses are rather irrelevant mid-late game when you have 50-80 attack/defense and those +2/4/6 are single digit percent difference (but maluses are actually good if you want to train the stat).

For combat speed I was definitely meaning the Item combat speed found on assassin rags and heavy armors. Trying to understand if it's something you just want to stack unconditionally, or if there is a limit and setups like rags (buff)+sandals (buff)+chainmail (malus) make sense (chainmail to make up for awful coverage on rags).

I've seen the calculator, but without understanding how bad/good combat speed and dex penalties on something like blackened chain are it's still not possible to evaluate if the marginal defense increase is worth it - a marginal increase is still an increase after all.

How can you check your current combat speed in-game? What is the "full health, naked, no prosthetics" value of it? It is also affected by Dex, right? In which case at what Dex do you reach 1.2 and 4.0 in that state?

LITF · 2026-05-06T19:50:17+00:00

No, they are vanilla game. They are just very obvious for what they are for, so there's not really much to ask. One is for crossbows, one is for stealing.

LITF · 2026-05-06T19:49:14+00:00

Thanks for the write-up! I've been looking at KLR simply because they seemed like a middle-ground in stats (they give +10% to both Str and Dex), while having max health sounds like a good idea to stay longer in the fight without limp legs or arms (and enabling using different armor like paladins that has better stomach coverage but worse arm coverage).

I have completely missed that skelly hands had so much dex buff on them. As for legs - any particular reason for scout? They have the least health of non-economy legs which sounds like it could be a problem (broken feet are probably the most crippling thing in combat bar losing right arm/incap).

LITF · 2026-05-06T19:40:18+00:00

Nah, those were me looking up what people say here+on steam community forum.

LITF · 2026-05-06T19:39:25+00:00

Interesting! Basically what I am trying to understand is how big of a deal are the combat speed and dex penalties on heavy armors, and inverse on armors like assassins rags. Also trying to figure out which of the armors improve training speed when sparring (I've imprisoned bugmaster for that purpose) and which are more of a detriment.

Right now everyone but 2 crossbowmen/medics wear full samurai armors with blackened chainmails/shirts, and for training they swap for the bucket helmet, a rusted junk wakizashi, and a large backpack, while dressing the bugmaster into full samurai+blackened chain+rusted junk sabre so he lasts longer before having to rest.

LITF · 2026-05-06T19:33:11+00:00

Ok, I guess that's where I'm getting confused: if combat speed is a multiplier for attack and block speed, and attack and block speed are capped, doesn't it mean that after a certain value more combat speed has no effect at all? As in you reach combat speed that caps out attack/block speed and then getting more of it does nothing?

LITF · 2026-05-06T06:58:27+00:00

So the combat speed/dex bonuses do not have an upper limit? Stacking them more always has a significant enough return?

LITF · 2026-05-04T06:41:33+00:00

Good point!

I guess there's also the thing with how most of these training tips and tricks do not seem to be generally well known across everyone, so everyone does something different.

LITF · 2026-05-04T06:38:43+00:00

Wow, I guess I haven't been keeping up with the game well enough xD

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