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

[MadMaxHellfire]

and that's perfectly fine, their turf, their rules.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Well, my main character now has trained strength to 70. Seems like I should be able to go do some fighting in my new home since I escaped enslavement: Mongrel.

Also, very easy to get rich. Copper mining is quite profitable.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i don't know how you people manage to play vanilla. i installed mods to cut my income by tenfold and still get filthy rich in a matter of minutes.

 

[Zanzoken]

after a run with the holy nation i can finally say: who's the idiot who keeps saying they're evil? their land is SAFE, and i mean SAFE, nothing will attack you, even wildlife is neutral and extremely weak and even if you're inept enough to screw up there's plenty of patrols willing to help and feed you, there's just no danger, everything is green and lush and tranquil, resources abound everywhere, people are nice, kind and welcoming. all they ask in return is thoughts and prayers once a week and for you to know your place in society because safety and richness demand order. that's it.

united cities? skimmers. gorram skimmers everywhere. and when you dodge skimmers there's sand ninjas. and then dust bandits. and then rebel farmers. and then vagrants. and then slavers or manhunters. and when you finally find a military patrol, oh sorry it's a noble hunter who'll snipe the shit out of your face in the middle of nowhere-to-hide.

holy nation is not a "lesser evil", it's plain good.

Whether factions are good or bad really depends on your own views and what you can and can't tolerate.

Holy Nation is theocratic, racist, sexist.
United Cities are feudalistic, materialist, egoist.
Shek are militarist, primitive, anti-intellectual.

Personally I probably dislike the HN the most because ultra-religious people really annoy me and there is no basis of merit in their society. They are almost literally a Muslim caliphate -- just substitute Okran for Allah and it's turnkey.

 

[Saduj]

They are almost literally a Muslim caliphate -- just substitute Okran for Allah and it's turnkey.

Okran = Koran. The lore concerning Narko reminds me of The Satanic Verses.

 

[polo]

after a run with the holy nation i can finally say: who's the idiot who keeps saying they're evil? their land is SAFE, and i mean SAFE, nothing will attack you, even wildlife is neutral and extremely weak and even if you're inept enough to screw up there's plenty of patrols willing to help and feed you, there's just no danger, everything is green and lush and tranquil, resources abound everywhere, people are nice, kind and welcoming. all they ask in return is thoughts and prayers once a week and for you to know your place in society because safety and richness demand order. that's it.

united cities? skimmers. gorram skimmers everywhere. and when you dodge skimmers there's sand ninjas. and then dust bandits. and then rebel farmers. and then vagrants. and then slavers or manhunters. and when you finally find a military patrol, oh sorry it's a noble hunter who'll snipe the shit out of your face in the middle of nowhere-to-hide.

holy nation is not a "lesser evil", it's plain good.

They do have a fuckton of slaves tho-
Also if you have even a robotic limb they will attack you and your friends.

In other news, my MC destroyed Dust king and all hist bandits, the cannibal chief and his cannibals, and Dimak & Buzan with their ninjas. He strong af right now. All thanks to sand ninja Oni, thanks to they guy in the codex who recommended me finding a strong ninja in the desert!

 

[Tovias]

To be fair, the Holy Nation was right about all their fears and worries, except about women I guess.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

*especially* about women.

 

[tindrli]

when i enter the building and go upstairs. how can i see top floor?

im on the roof on that picture.
is there a button to highlight what is collectible? i suppose not but still

 

[user]

Just above the inventory button, there's a floor button. Press ^.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

And there's a button to highlight items, I believe it's ALT (been a few days since I've played, can't remember exactly)

 

[tindrli]

Just above the inventory button, there's a floor button. Press ^.

holy shit its HUGE! thank you

And there's a button to highlight items, I believe it's ALT (been a few days since I've played, can't remember exactly)

Ok, will try it thanx

 

[polo]

Yeah, you can use PgUp and PgDwn to switch floors also.

 

[mondblut]

So, now that I decided to reacquire Flying Bull and keep him in my own custody - what is the most efficient way of grinding toughness and defense on him? Should I give him cut or blunt? Worst damage possible or the strongest weapons I have? Do I wear heaviest armor or none at all? In short, are these things grinded better by blocking and shrugging off hundreds of weak strikes, or by having my guys' heads driven through their pelvic bones with a single strike?

 

[Payd Shell]

The most important part of training toughness is getting up again as soon as you can after you've been downed. Of course, you need to adjust the damage the enemies or your training dummy does according to the KO threshold your character has. Generally speaking, getting hit by high damage attacks while naked raises toughness the fastest, but this won't allow you to get up as many times during a single fight, if at all. Ideally you want to have a weak enemy with cutting attacks down you over and over again while naked so you can get up as many times as possible as soon as you can. IIRC bandaged cutting damage heals faster than blunt damage but the downside is that cutting causes bleeding, but since bleeding is a joke in Kenshi you don't really need to pay that much attention to it.

 

[polo]

Gettin eaten or skinned makes your toughness to skyrocket up. If you can manage to do it and not die... Just sayin.

 

[polo]

So, to recruit high level npcs with bounties are you using mods right?

 

[mondblut]

So, to recruit high level npcs with bounties are you using mods right?

Me? I didn't recruit him, I sold him to the Shek and now stole him away for my own use.

But yeah, you need the "recruitable prisoners" mod.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

one of the lacking aspects of kenshi, but which can be easily fixed, is that recruits, even unique, are all the same. apart from headshot which starts from a whopping 60 in crossbows, which is quite something but still only a matter of time, every single man is like the others. even people recruited from tengu's vault may have maybe a 10-15 points in some stats here and there, which are a matter of minutes to gain on any other random bloke.
my quick workarounds:
1) buff them at least to 40-50 levels, that's some time investiment spared
2) make a new, specific race for each of them and assign it special boni, like a +50% xp to some skills gains or a flat +.
not much but it'd help a lot.

 

[Zanzoken]

I wouldn't say it's an easy fix though. What is a unique NPC? Someone with unique content, such as a recruitment chain or quests you can only access after adding them to your party (or both). They also should have some kind of utility in gameplay that is not achievable with other characters, i.e an exclusive class or abilities. And also plot significance and/or dialogue.

As far as I know Kenshi doesn't have mechanics to support hardly any of this. The closest examples are NPCs like Beep who give unique dialogue and reactions, and Seto who is only recruitable after certain conditions are met.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i *just* told what i mean and how to fix it.

 

[polo]

I don't think making a special race for each recruit makes any sense tbh. Also i don't think thats what i would call easy.

 

[Tovias]

I'd say the only thing companions need is more dialogue options. From what I've seen you could have dialogue options for just meeting a kind of NPC.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Beep will be a warrior worth his name yet.

 

[Payd Shell]

one of the lacking aspects of kenshi, but which can be easily fixed, is that recruits, even unique, are all the same. apart from headshot which starts from a whopping 60 in crossbows, which is quite something but still only a matter of time, every single man is like the others. even people recruited from tengu's vault may have maybe a 10-15 points in some stats here and there, which are a matter of minutes to gain on any other random bloke.
my quick workarounds:
1) buff them at least to 40-50 levels, that's some time investiment spared
2) make a new, specific race for each of them and assign it special boni, like a +50% xp to some skills gains or a flat +.
not much but it'd help a lot.

You're ignoring the fact that Kenshi has nothing going for it other than progression for time invested. Getting high level recruits would instantly trivialize a lot of the content, a problem you'll encounter soon enough anyways. I'm also not a fan of giving companions special races, I kind of like the idea that everyone is just a dude or gal in Kenshi. From the Bugmaster to Cat-Lon, they're all regular 'people' just with pretty high stats which you can achieve yourself if you're masochistic enough. What I absolutely hate, however, is that even companions that shouldn't be shit, are in fact, shit. Like Burn, an ancient skeleton that's ready for one last adventure, is so dogshit a dust bandit beats him 1on1 when you recruit him. The game's lore is that skeletons never forget anything unless they choose to reset themselves, which comes with a loss of identity and all experiences the skeleton had but prevents them from going eventually insane. Burn's current runtime has neared its end, that's why he's ready to die. Yet, because the dev is aware that he's crafted a game that has NOTHING other than simple progression by time invested, he makes him really, really bad. So bad even that he often dies offscreen because the local enemies that roam that area are so much stronger than him it's not even funny anymore.

To fix Kenshi, you'd have to somehow think of a progression that's not related to character stats. You should give the recruitable prisoners mod a try if you haven't already and see for yourself how fundamentally broken it is to recruit enemies with stats above 40 or so. It's an instant power spike and since the game for whatever reason is very afraid of taking progress away from you via killing one of your characters (except when it comes to a few enemy types, fuck skin bandits) that power spike is permanent. The game's world works much like an MMO would operate. There's level appropiate areas for you to explore and to fight enemies that are near your level so that you gain xp. If you outlevel any zone, it immediately becomes obsolete. Exploring and looting is mostly worthless because you can just mass produce katanas to generate infinite money and go to the skeleton city and buy Edge Type 3 weapons for your guys. The only exception to this are the meitou weapons, which are just a slightly better stat stick than the Edge type weapons. They also look like they're missing textures.