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

[Delterius]

it's a cheat start if you have patience. i have very little, i'm the zoomest boomer around. yes, i feel shame.

That's the thing. People tell you to train strength as a slave. That's silly and takes too long. But all the 'rogue skills' sans thievery can be turbo charged as a slave. And every time you fuck up gives you a bit constitution.

 

[The_Mask]

It really depends on what weapon you're trying to go for. Katanas require virtually no STR training. In fact most weapons will be okay with 50 STR, which can be attainted rather easily. But there is always an argument to be made on what is grind and what is fun. Each person has their own idea.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

It depends. 70 or 80 strength is really a good tier. But I love the idea of one on one competing with the big guys.

 

[.Pixote.]

All right. Got into Kenshi based on the Codex. First game was a failure as I was bitten down by bonedogs after being stunlocked. They did not eat me, instead slavers patched me up and picked me up. I continued hoping that I'll be working on a farm soon. Then bonedogs attacked them after two days of walking and I ran away only to find out the city I saw on the horison was a Holy Nation city. They imprisoned me and I had to end the game after finding out I cannot escape after three tries. I figured I'll die out of hunger in the prison.

You wouldn't perish, you can get very thin and on the edge of starvation, but nevertheless you will survive. The beauty of the game is that there are no 'wrong' decisions (aside from death). Being a Holy Nation city prisoner is just the start of a new adventure. Eventually slavers would have come along and taken you from the Holy Nation, and yet another adventure.

I was a prisoner of the Empire over a trivial event, and within a few hours in the jail I was taken by slavers to their base (slave base south) and started a new life as their slave...my purpose shifted from basic survival to the complete destruction of the slavers guild. Eventually I had a bounty on my head of $500,000 cats and was the enemy of half the empires in the game.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

to whomever said "rebirth is a cheat start": under genesis mod rebirth is different and it's a gorram fortress with patrols everywhere and massive gates. i can't see myself getting out of there ever.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

You gotta up stealth like a mother fucker. My toughness is insane right now and still getting dominated because I never bothered with stealth

 

[TT1]

 

[The_Mask]

Feels like you don't have the best armour there, Blackhart. Do you have a dedicated smith to handle your clothing issues?

 

[Major_Blackhart]

That's regarding Rebirth in Genesis. It's got more guards in it now and functions like a legit base and concentration camp where the truly impossible to reform go.

 

[Werdnicus]

no, that is a major in philosophy/english language playing games while reflecting on what humanity was become.

That sounds incredibly gay.

 

[SoupNazi]

to whomever said "rebirth is a cheat start": under genesis mod rebirth is different and it's a gorram fortress with patrols everywhere and massive gates. i can't see myself getting out of there ever.

I haven't tried Genesis yet. Most people say it's basically a completely new game. But if you still just get put into a cage and healed & fed with, it will still be a cheat start because you get to up your stealth, train your assassination etc. without any consequences. Can't comment on the escape but once you get to like 80+ stealth you can just walk under people's noses lol

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

can't train stealth, as soon as you try you're seen and gangbanged. can't train assassination because it's always 0% and won't even trigger. and you're not always healed, more often than not i've been left to die or put on a pole to die. thank you kenshi's ai. nexus even hasn't the "hard labor trains strength" anymore. i spent already two months in there but i'm still a wimp.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

You're doing it wrong.

 

[Gahbreeil]

can't train stealth.

You find one of them tech hunters and follow the character in the wilds. Sneak goes up.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

we're explicitly talking about a single scenario, "rebirth start". please gee tee eff oh.

 

[SoupNazi]

I enabled Genesis just to see what you mean. And indeed, compared to vanilla, sneaking around seems to get you beaten up instead of ignored which is a nice change imo. Nonetheless all you need is to get a cage on top of the roof of a stormhouse and you can farm stealth to your heart's content, again the most important part is lack of consequence. I haven't had time to test it properly but so far even on the prisoner poles I've been healed and fed when at 110 hunger just like in vanilla. But maybe eventually they run out of patience (I've been complaining about that in vanilla).

The extra defenses and guard posts, while looking really stupid most of the time, will not make things much more difficult once you do farm up stealth. It's just an OP skill when high enough and at night, unfortunately.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i can't go on =_= loading times with genesis are just too long, it takes at least a whole minute for every new sector, worse if there are cities.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

No idea if it's a vanilla or modded behaviour. Sometimes other inmates in Rebirth turn green when freed from cages, and in very rare occurrences they join the team right away as playable characters, not only as NPCs which will follow your lead and that, once safe, have another chance of joining, like bought slaves have. What are the chances? What are the triggers?
180 days (mostly idling) in Rebirth and only one joined.

 

[SoupNazi]

No idea if it's a vanilla or modded behaviour. Sometimes other inmates in Rebirth turn green when freed from cages, and in very rare occurrences they join the team right away as playable characters, not only as NPCs which will follow your lead and that, once safe, have another chance of joining, like bought slaves have. What are the chances? What are the triggers?
180 days (mostly idling) in Rebirth and only one joined.

I've had them join right away while in Rebirth once or twice, but usually they only become green and copy my behavior (like hired mercs). It's actually quite annoying because they can't sneak for shit and will start fights with guards when I'm trying to sneak past / KO them, lol. So I stopped freeing them until the point where I'm actually ready to escape (after clearing a route all the way to one of the gates), because the chance for them to join the squad are so low it's not worth the risk.

 

[mondblut]

Oh joy, I learned how to get myself more than 256 characters by editing save files with FCS. Excess characters won't have portraits generated, but it's not like I can tell those dozens of identical bucket helmets apart anyway.

 

[HoboForEternity]

i kinda wanna give this game another chance. how viable is loremater/archeologist RP if i want to learn the lore of the world. how are they presented?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

loremater/archeologist RP

Age of Decadence is that-a-way, men.

 

[Zanzoken]

i kinda wanna give this game another chance. how viable is loremater/archeologist RP if i want to learn the lore of the world. how are they presented?

In Kenshi people like this are known as Tech Hunters. It's a viable option for a playthrough given that the world has a significant amount of lost history / secrets to discover, but unfortunately the game offers no path to join the Tech Hunters faction or work in conjunction with them, and there are virtually no questing or reward systems to help you set goals or recognize you for your effort.

In terms of gameplay it should be pretty fun though, since exploration is one of the game's strong points and you'll get to see a lot of the world this way. You could run a small, lightly-armored party that relies on Stealth and Athletics to keep you out of harm's way, or go the "expedition" route and build up a force of heavily armed guards that can carve a path through hostile territory.

Not a bad way to play the game, all things considered. And there might be a few mods you could pick up that would help with the LARPing aspects somewhat.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Oh joy, I learned how to get myself more than 256 characters by editing save files with FCS. Excess characters won't have portraits generated, but it's not like I can tell those dozens of identical bucket helmets apart anyway.

I did this combining save files thing and the "imported" characters _did_ get portraits if you manually edited one value (portrait_index?) to something not in use by the old characters. Granted, I was working far below that 256 limit... so who knows. (I can't believe Chris would really be using 8-bit integers anywhere.)

 

[HoboForEternity]

i kinda wanna give this game another chance. how viable is loremater/archeologist RP if i want to learn the lore of the world. how are they presented?

In Kenshi people like this are known as Tech Hunters. It's a viable option for a playthrough given that the world has a significant amount of lost history / secrets to discover, but unfortunately the game offers no path to join the Tech Hunters faction or work in conjunction with them, and there are virtually no questing or reward systems to help you set goals or recognize you for your effort.

In terms of gameplay it should be pretty fun though, since exploration is one of the game's strong points and you'll get to see a lot of the world this way. You could run a small, lightly-armored party that relies on Stealth and Athletics to keep you out of harm's way, or go the "expedition" route and build up a force of heavily armed guards that can carve a path through hostile territory.

Not a bad way to play the game, all things considered. And there might be a few mods you could pick up that would help with the LARPing aspects somewhat.

Are there mods to add that content? Either way i can always pretend i build a new indie tech hunter guild with blackjack and hookers. Like how are the background history presented? Are there artifacts to hunt? Ruins to spelunk? Certain NPCs that knows some history to interview?