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

[Grampy_Bone]

Trying to get back into this, I have a self-sufficient base in the middle of Holy Nation territory. I'm having problems leveling my main team, they can barely defeat a pack of dust bandits and it usually almost wipes them out, but their combat stats barely budge.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Trying to get back into this, I have a self-sufficient base in the middle of Holy Nation territory. I'm having problems leveling my main team, they can barely defeat a pack of dust bandits and it usually almost wipes them out, but their combat stats barely budge.

Unfortunately, combat stats in Kenshi reach a point where excessive grinding is necessary to increase them further so that your party can deal with the deadlier threats offered by the game. This is something I've criticized in past posts. Aside from installing a cheat mod to speed stat increases, there are certain exploits that can taken advantage of, such as using captured skeletons for combat practice.

 

[mondblut]

Trying to get back into this, I have a self-sufficient base in the middle of Holy Nation territory. I'm having problems leveling my main team, they can barely defeat a pack of dust bandits and it usually almost wipes them out, but their combat stats barely budge.

Leave them for a night overloaded, carrying corpses and set to follow a guy set to carry ore from a drill to a distant storage, and by morning you'll have them rivaling the bugmaster in strength and athletics (unless someone forgets to eat and dies). Dump crippled robots on skeleton repair beds and beat them up to train attack, dexterity and a weaponskill. Put a crippled enemy inside a building and line up your guys outside with xbows and turrets to grind, well, xbows and turrets (and perception).

For toughness and defense/dodge you'll have to fight actual armed prisoners and keep getting your ass kicked until you're satisfied with your progress. I tend to stop at toughness 35 and defense 70, that doesn't take much time (maybe 10 full beatings from a strong unique per trainee).

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Trying to get back into this, I have a self-sufficient base in the middle of Holy Nation territory. I'm having problems leveling my main team, they can barely defeat a pack of dust bandits and it usually almost wipes them out, but their combat stats barely budge.

Leave them for a night overloaded, carrying corpses and set to follow a guy set to carry ore from a drill to a distant storage, and by morning you'll have them rivaling the bugmaster in strength and athletics (unless someone forgets to eat and dies). Dump crippled robots on skeleton repair beds and beat them up to train attack, dexterity and a weaponskill. Put a crippled enemy inside a building and line up your guys outside with xbows and turrets to grind, well, xbows and turrets (and perception).

For toughness and defense/dodge you'll have to fight actual armed prisoners and keep getting your ass kicked until you're satisfied with your progress. I tend to stop at toughness 35 and defense 70, that doesn't take much time (maybe 10 full beatings from a strong unique per trainee).

Those kinds of leveling tricks are pretty annoying. Where are these strong uniques I should capture? Where's a good place to get skeletons? I don't have the tech books to research skeleton beds.

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

Trying to get back into this, I have a self-sufficient base in the middle of Holy Nation territory. I'm having problems leveling my main team, they can barely defeat a pack of dust bandits and it usually almost wipes them out, but their combat stats barely budge.

How many people are in your team? There's strength in numbers, especially early on. You can get experience a lot faster if you have a group of 6-10 running around attacking everything in sight. Equipping them with good gear also helps a ton.

Also there are certain places on the map where enemies just spawn non-stop which are great for training

 

[Zanzoken]

Mod update! I am essentially finished with my expansion of the Cannibal Hunter stronghold. I am sure I will continue to make tweaks here and there, but unless something drastic happens this is the completed version.

First, the virgin Bastion from vanilla:

Spoiler

Now the chad version, a proper fortification:

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Another view:

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The expanded stronghold now has a bar + 5 new vendors to supply food, weapons, and other needed supplies. Each shop has a custom interior and vendor list (already implemented) and shopkeepers will also have some unique dialogue to give a bit more insight into Cannibal Hunter culture (working on this now).

My approach right now is that allying with the Cannibal Hunters will be similar to allying with the Shinobi Thieves. All you have to do to gain access to their services is pay a fee. Bastion traders are restricted to allies only, but once you're in you get 50% off at all shops. The exception to this is the bar, which will serve anyone but is always full price. Allies also get 50% off contracts with Cannibal Hunter mercenaries (haven't implemented this yet, but I don't think it will be an issue).

Once you're an ally, you'll also have the opportunity to train at the Bastion proper (i.e. the big HQ up on the hill), prove yourself to Cannibal Hunter leadership, and ultimately shape the outcome of the Cannibal war. What that means exactly is still TBD, but I have a lot of ideas and will be exploring in more detail soon.

All of this is WIP and definitely open to feedback, so let me know what you guys think!

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Trying to get back into this, I have a self-sufficient base in the middle of Holy Nation territory. I'm having problems leveling my main team, they can barely defeat a pack of dust bandits and it usually almost wipes them out, but their combat stats barely budge.

How many people are in your team? There's strength in numbers, especially early on. You can get experience a lot faster if you have a group of 6-10 running around attacking everything in sight. Equipping them with good gear also helps a ton.

Also there are certain places on the map where enemies just spawn non-stop which are great for training

I have a team of 12 armed with Catun #1 level weapons and armor.

 

[mondblut]

Those kinds of leveling tricks are pretty annoying. Where are these strong uniques I should capture?

Gang leaders. Flying Bull, Red Sabre Boss, Shade (swamp ninja leader), dust king, etc.

Basically you can use anybody, but my observations imply that the stronger the opponent, the faster you develop against him.

Where's a good place to get skeletons?

Floodlands. There is always a couple of "broken skeletons" wandering around.

If you are feeling brave, go to Venge (AT NIGHT), find tower of abuse and snatch two unique skeleton bosses there. + #metoo weapons and a skelly recruit.

I don't have the tech books to research skeleton beds.

Well, get them. Eventually all your lads will have 2 skeleton arms and one leg (leave another intact to preserve the boot slot - or don't), so you can just as well get the research done nao.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Eventually all your lads will have 2 skeleton arms and one leg

Is there a huge benefit to prosthetics or are you just saying dismemberment is inevitable?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

and his sister Nat

is she qt
edit: nvm she's british

 

[mondblut]

Eventually all your lads will have 2 skeleton arms and one leg

Is there a huge benefit to prosthetics or are you just saying dismemberment is inevitable?

Masterwork prosthetics give massive boost to movement speed (scout legs), industrial arms to str, KLR arms to str (half as much as industrial) and dex. Not to mention having a lot more hp than living limbs. If you are running any hivers, not replacing all of their brittle limbs is just stupid. But everyone else massively benefits from them too.

Check the waystation SE of the Hub regularly until you begin to produce your own.

I give all of mine an industrial left and a KLR right arm (industrial has more hp and left arm gets hit far more often than right) and one scout leg, netting some +25% athletics, 30% str and 10% dex. Hivers get two scout legs for 50% athletics. Skellies get KLR legs since they can't swim anyway (scout legs are the only ones that don't cripple swimming much) for tons of hp.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Interesting. I went to the Dust King tower but he mopped the floor with me. Ran off with a few of his bros. Maybe I'll whittle them down.

My base is located south of Blister Hill, it's really safe and easy but also boring, the spawns are all wimpy and the raids are just Holy Nation doofuses. "We heard u have wimin here" "nope all bros" "okay peace out bros." I've felt like attacking them just to make it interesting but they'd probably kill me and I'd lose my access to nearby cities. Time to scout around for more interesting spots.

 

[Delterius]

Interesting. I went to the Dust King tower but he mopped the floor with me. Ran off with a few of his bros. Maybe I'll whittle them down.

My base is located south of Blister Hill, it's really safe and easy but also boring, the spawns are all wimpy and the raids are just Holy Nation doofuses. "We heard u have wimin here" "nope all bros" "okay peace out bros." I've felt like attacking them just to make it interesting but they'd probably kill me and I'd lose my access to nearby cities. Time to scout around for more interesting spots.

always settle on:

shem

northern coast

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

always settle on:

shem

northern coast

In my one playthrough of Kenshi, I found a good spot in eastern Shem for copper, iron, and wind. The environment would limit the type of crops that could be produced, but I had already researched up to hydroponics, so it wasn't an issue for me.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I found Narko's Trap and snuck past the guards to loot it, 3 AI cores and over a dozen Ancient Books. Neat. I was spotted by a spider on the way out, led it into the holybros and took off. Two of them followed me to the rest of my team (14 people v 2 Holy Guardians) and beat everyone into the dirt. Lol. Then they just walked away, so thanks for the Toughness XP I guess.

I looted more Ancient books and upgraded everyone's gear, went to the Dust King tower and stormed the gate. Kicked everyone's ass. Meanwhile the Dust bandits sent a raid to my base, a measly 8 guys, shot to death by turrets.

I'll start scouting for more base locations now, I've got a nice stockpile of resources and ready to find more interesting towns.

 

[Zanzoken]

Any of you guys have experience with Blender / 3D modeling? I wonder how difficult it would be to combine the Assassins Rags and Heart Protector into a custom armor model.

Here are pics of the two items in question (NSFW warning -- almost naked girl):

Spoiler

It would probably take some fiddling to get it to look right, but since the assets already exist is it something a complete novice could put together in an afternoon?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Any of you guys have experience with Blender / 3D modeling? I wonder how difficult it would be to combine the Assassins Rags and Heart Protector into a custom armor model.

Here are pics of the two items in question (NSFW warning -- almost naked girl):

Spoiler

It would probably take some fiddling to get it to look right, but since the assets already exist is it something a complete novice could put together in an afternoon?

You want models to put more clothing on the women? Never gonna happen.

 

[Obsequious Approbation]

Kenshi 2 will be on Unreal.

Kenshi/Kenshi 2 Development News
Directly from Chris Hunt, Lo-Fi Games CEO and the man behind Kenshi:

"Good news everyone! There has been a change of plans with development, and we have switched to the Unreal engine!

Now, what does that mean?

GOOD SIDE:

• Amazing graphics with little effort
  
• Better performance
  
• Less work for us long-term, as we don't have to worry about engine bugs and features. We can focus more on gameplay.
  
• Fancy features, like maybe cloth physics for example
  
• Better stability probably?
  
• New pathfinding system

BAD SIDE:

• More work for us short-term, porting is a huge job
  
• We have less control over the engine
  
• Modding support will be more complicated, Unreal is a difficult engine to work with and has limitations in this respect. I don't know the engine well enough to say how exactly. The likely scenario is "more powerful but more difficult". The FCS will remain the same, but will control less stuff. Mod support will be a high priority for us though, so don't worry.
  
• Kenshi 1 update now uncertain:
  Here's the kicker: Porting Kenshi 1 to Unreal engine is now way more work than making Kenshi 2, because we have to port assets and make the old stuff work, where for Kenshi 2 we are making the assets from scratch in the Unreal-compatible way. We have started porting Kenshi 1, but I'm not sure whether to finish it because it is a lot of extra work and will delay Kenshi 2

So I'd like some feedback from people. Personally I feel like it would be better to focus on Kenshi 2, which will have exciting new features, new content and world to explore and mechanics to play with, rather than remaking kenshi 1, which would be essentially the same game."

To get some more definitive feedback we've also put up a poll here: https://www.strawpoll.me/18697532

P.S. This does not mean Epic Exclusive, it's just a game engine choice. Don't panic.

 

[Delterius]

see you guys in 2031

 

[Zombra]

see you guys in 2031

It's a matter of time x 1

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Totally going to be an Epic exclusive.

 

[Ironmonk]

He probably got an pre-deal already and if he reach a expected goal set by Epic (porting and make it look good enough), it will be certain. He can just say he changed his mind after that and blablabla.

 

[Morgoth]

They should port it.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

It's like that scene in Thank You For Smoking where they bribe the Marlboro Man. Epic throws suitcases full of cash at people; he'd be insane not to take it.

 

[toro]

Don't click. It will make you install the game again.

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