Beginning Strategy

[Bruno]

Have any interesting beginning strategies that you feel make you unique? Post 'em here.

[Zakk]

Not really a unique strategy but i picked wandering trader start so thats what i decided my guy should do. I even named him Coin.

i started trading between Eyesocket and the traders outpost close by with trips to the big city across the valley from the outpost that i forgot the name of. selling food to the outpost and bringing back medkits made an ok profit for a while. i spent a lot of time making small profits because i kept buying things and never keeping enough in the ledger as it were to trade more expensive goods to make bigger profits. i eventually ended up with three companions, a fellow trader (700 cats at a bar, gave him a traders backpack to carry shit) and two bodyguards (2500 cats skills at 10 variety) and a mix of shoddy and standard grade armor from towns. i avoided fights entirely until i had the two bodyguards. after two dustbandit groups were killed by town guards with my guys jumping in for some combat practice (bad idea, with no fighting experience i almost lost two people. hooray for npcs bandaging me!) i got enough money from their stuff to buy some very nice weapons and start trading chain sheets. a little while of that and i had standard grade armor for everyone and started looking for fights to jump in and help with. i found lots of bandit groups and some samurai patrols by south fort so added that to my normal route. i eventually bought a house in eyesocket and put a research bench in it, and also hired a cheap guy from a bar to work on it.

thats as far as ive gotten in i think about 18 hours. my traders have combat skills in the low teens with my bodyguards in the high 20s. i can just barely take a group of starving bandits without anyone going down. im not sure what to do with the house and really hope i can rearrange the squad bar for when i get more people for my little caravan. my next goal is to find and recruit Infinite Wingwang and then start stockpiling resources and looking for combat experience in preparation for building a base. im probably going to try to make rum at the base and sell it from the house in eyesocket.

[Snowpig]

I modded "Rock bottom" to start even without weapons.
Another quite funny start is to begin "Rock Bottom", but inside the Cannibal camp 2.

To spice it up, i changed the behaviour of the "roaming" Cannibals to bring the bodies they snatch to the nearest cannibal camp, which shortens extremely the time you have to escape that camp before being eaten. Unfortunately one side effect of this mod was that most roaming groups did not continue their patrol after delivery, which ended up with ~100-120 Cannibals piling up in Cannibal Camp 1.

[Zeal]

Rock bottom start, with a minor adjustement to standings..

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =255920707

[Gunnysack Man]

I've only started a couple games, but my beginning strategy is one of the suggested strategies. I start with a wanderer and hire a single companion. With my squad strength up to two men, I begin luring various bandit groups near towns. As the guards begin obliterating the weak bandits, I make sure to get my own squad's combat skills up with some good ole fighting. I scavenge some weapons for my squad, not wanting to equip armor so I can gain some toughness, and sell any extra gear and turn in the bounties that I find. My first buy is always any straw hats I can afford and sandals for that little boost to my combat skills.

I rinse and repeat this process until my initial two squadmates are geared, usually in light or no armor, and then move from town to town to increase my squad size. Anything after my squad size hits 6 or so I would teeter off of any structured strategy and start deciding what kind of band of desert samurai I want to cultivate.

A few things I keep in mind when I start:

• Keeping Things Even - Since most vanilla starts have only enough cats for a few hirelings, it can be easy for them to outshine your other squadmates. I like to inhibit my veterans for at least the first ten members and use all the initial cats earned to recruit more members as possible. This keeps the bulk of my squad at the same level and makes them more of a force to be reckoned with.
• Training is Everything - Skills are everything in Kenshi. Skills earn you cats, keep you alive, and open doors for your squad. I try to take every possibility to train a skill and push it to the max. Instead of just looting a body and leaving it there, I'll have my squad members each pick up a body and carry it to their next destination, or until it wakes up. This trains your strength extremely fast and can make trading and looting more items very easy. Fighting insurmountable odds is always a great way to train your toughness as well. If I see a huge group of bandits and think my squad can go through a full KO and still live in the end, I'll attack them. This builds your toughness and is vital to starting out.
• Diversity - Unless I'm really getting into the characters in my squad (which I do often) I'll try to assign them specific combat roles. In the beginning, my first two hires are always combat centered. They end up being the main DPS of the group. The next two I hire are usually assigned to a tank and medic role. I keep the tank assigned to Taunt (without Block Only ticked) and let him take as much hits as he can get. This builds his toughness and allows the damage dealers to get some vital hits off. For the medic I tick Non-combat and untick Chase. I keep him/her just on the outskirts of battle and try to keep them out of the fight as much as possible. If you can afford to hire a real medic, this role will perform perfectly.

I want to explore more beginning strategies, but this one works for me so far. Trading seems like it could be fun if you could get a good starting profit.

[Snowpig]

one thing i forgot to mention: when starting in Shark - there is a house with two level-1 training-dummies inside you can use for free.