Kenshi Starters Guide

[OttoNL]

Kenshi Starters Guide
Word document < More recent version!

In this guide I’m going to give you a buttload of tips to make Kenshi work… A bit better.

Not to say it doesn’t, but there’s just a couple of weird things that you need to know in order to work with it and then it’s a whole lot of fun. Finding out these things on your own may lead to losing a game or some characters.
I will try and devide it into segments so it’s easy to find relevant information.

I’m going to assume that you started out with Rock Bottom. This scenario is hardest and many of you will chose a different one, but in that case you can just ignore some of the steps. In that scenario you start out with a crappy sword, some rags and I think not a single Cat (currency)

By the way, I’m playing 0.50.3 at the moment and am assuming you are too. I will update it as soon as I have played the next version for a while and know what’s different.
On some things I’m not a 100% sure. I’ve marked those things with a * and if anybody knows please post below and I’ll update it asap.

Controls and How to get started

First of all the controls. M opens the map, C shows stats of selected character, I opens inventory (sometimes it unbinds every time you start the game because of a bug, not sure how commin it is) and T opens a screen with multiple tabs. Here you can do research, crafting and see some Faction settings. (More on those topics later on.)
1-10 let’s you select character 1-10 and clicking on portraits let’s you select a character as well. If you use the mouse you can hold shift to select several and offcourse you can select with the mouse.
Rightclick makes you move somewhere and clicking and holding the right mouse button gives you more options. For instance you can right-click-and-hold a teammate to heal him, to pick him up if wounded or to loot (trade) him, you can right-click-and-hold on yourself to heal yourself and you can right-click-and-hold an enemy to attack him. If you right-click-and-hold on the ground the selected characters follow your mouse.

When you start out you’ll find in most scenarios that you have lousy combat stats so you need more men, some better gear if possible and some money in order to get more men. And combat XP offcourse! You might wonder how in the hell you’re going to do when I start out with such a crappy character?
But don’t worry, you can train with training dummies in some cities (until a certain level, standard dummies until level 5 which is pretty low). You can also run towards some enemies make sure they attack and follow you and then run to a gate of a city so that the Guards attack and kill them. You can join in the fight to gain combat XP but make sure you have a medikit. After that you can loot (single rightclick on dead body and drag or rightclick items to move them to your own inventory. Mouse over to see combat stats of weapons and armour). You will probably not find great gear this way. The Starving Bandits often have clubs and the Dust Bandits have rusty swords and very basic armor, but their ‘Heart Protector’ armor is better then nothing and if you kill a Dust Bandit Boss you can get his big ♥♥♥ Ringed Sabre and possibly some better armour then the normal bandits give you. Dust bandits also have footwear that improve running speed in sand. By running to and from the city you will gain XP in the Athletics skill which makes you run faster which will prove to be very helpful. There is a lot of traveling over long distances and when you’re trading and have a lot of weight in your backpack it slows you down, but a high athletics skill let’s you get away from pesky bandits.

You can recruit people in Bars. You can find bars in most cities. They have a sign with a bottle and a cup. In a bar should be a guy behind the counter, a guard and a guy that gives facelifts. (Unless they join a big fight) If there are more then 3 guys in there there’s a good chance you can find recruits there. Most recruits cost 700 cats, you can get trained engineers, medics or fighters with lvl. 10 combat stats for 2500 cats and sometimes you can find a guy named Infinite Wingwang for 100.000 which you can haggle down to about 5.000. He has 25 in combat stats (But not on Katana).

If you have a small group of people it´s wise to have atleast one permanent medic. (Hold shift while clicking the Medic button after selecting your character you want to make a medic. More on permanent jobs in Permanent Jobs section)

Combat

First off I’ll explain the types of weapons. There are Clubs, Katana’s, Toppers, Sabre’s, Planks and maybe other heavy weapons that I forgot, but all heavy weapons will have a lot of similarities. How to craft those weapons will be explained in Building and Research. This is about their pros and cons and how to train them.

Katana’s Well I don’t think I need to explain those, we all know the Katana as the ‘samurai-sword’. It’s light and fast and has a nice range. It requires you to be precise but not too strong, and it will train Dexterity (which kind of comes down to precision), Attack, Defense and offcourse the Katana skill.

Sabres are a bit heavier but have about the same range. They are better for defending though, and they do more damage but they swing slower. It would be wise if you have a permanent medic (more on that later) to let him have a Sabre although it can do fine with a katana as well. Using a Sabre boosts your Attack, Defence, Sabre, Dexterity and Strength skill. (Only slightly boosts the strength skill though. More on that in the Combat Stats part of this section)

Toppers are a different version of the Katana according to this game. I’m not too familiar with oriental weapons but using a Topper boosts your Katana skill. It seems to be a bit longer, but it’s hard to tell if you actually get more reach with a longer weapon. In the future I assume it will.
The good thing about using Toppers is that even cheaper toppers have a very high attack and defense bonus and you can really tell in combat that it does a lot of damage. The percentage of swings that hits is not (obviously) higher*, but it’s worth the money in my opinion. There are plenty of Katana’s with high bonuses too though, so it’s not like they are much better, but they are not too hard to find and not very expensive.

Planks, Clubs, Strength weapons. These will offcourse boost your strength xp especially and offcourse your attack and defence. In earlier versions they often hit several enemies in 1 swing but I’m not sure if they still do in .50.3 and I think they add Sabre xp because of their high weight, but later they will boost the Heavy Weapons skill.

Combat Stats
Melee Attack and Defence:
You can train your Melee Attack and Defence skills by fighting. But how you fight affects how you level up your skills. For instance if you swarm an enemy with 5 guys your men attack a lot and have to defend very little. This will boost the attack skill more than the defence skill.
Strength:
Heavier weapons will give you a higher strength boost. Walking long distances with a heavy load boosts your strength as well.
Dexterity:
Especially lighter weapons give you a high Dexterity boost.
Athletics:
This is increased by running. I don’t think it affects your attack like ‘agility’ sometimes does in games but it’s still a usefull skill in combat so I advise to use all your characters as traders every now and then.
Katanas:
This is increased by using Katana’s, Nodashi’s, Ninja Blades and Toppers.
Sabres:
Increased by using Sabres
Hackers:
Increased by using Hackers
Heavy Weapons:
Increased by using Heavy weapons like for instance Planks
Field Medic:
Increased by being a medic. Level 0-5 medics are very slow at healing teammates. It’s good to have a lot of characters with a medic level above 8 and have a few with a very high field medic level. This level is also increased by producing medikits.

Different types of armor have different advantages. Usually plate armour is good against slashes and chain armour is good against arrows and stabbing. We don’t have range weapons yet and I haven’t seen stabbing either, even with shorter pointier swords, so at this point in time I would advise to use whatever you find on your victims. A couple of fighters with decent combat stats and a mediocre weapon is enough to fight off some bandits and good armour is heavy and slows you down a lot. As long as squads of bandits are small I advise against heavy armour.
Blocks, Non-Combat, Chase, Taunt. These are options you can check for every fighter. They are kind of self-explanatory, but I will explain it just in case.

Blocks gives you a +20 bonus on Defense and you only block attacks. This can be helpful, but if there’s 2 of you blocking and 2 enemies they still sometimes hit you while you don’t damage them. That means you give them all the time in the world to kill you even if it will be a bit harder. But on the other hand if you have 20 people in your town and you only select Blocks for the medic it can be very usefull, the other guys will attack and the medic is much less likely to die.
Non-Combat makes your guy avoid all contact with enemies until directly attacked. It will not help teammates in a fight. It also makes your character less of a target for enemies.
Chase Lets your character chase enemies when they run away. Can be usefull but sometimes they chase them for ages and getting separated from your squad is often not a safe situation. Make sure you keep track of the characters that chase.
Taunt lets the enemy focus on the character that has this option checked. You don’t see or hear them do anything, but it should make your character more of a target. I’m not a 100% sure if it really works as it doesn’t make a really big difference, but I assume it does.

Attacking shopkeepers, guards, or a citizen from a certain faction can cause a war to break out. You have a relationship with all factions, when you start a game some will negative, most neutral and sometimes one or more positive. If your cursor becomes red when you hold it over a member of a faction that means you have a bad relationship with them and you can attack them by right-clicking. If the cursor stays white your relation with them is positive or neutral. You can right-click-and-hold them and select unprovoked attack to attack them. This makes your relation go to negative while healing a wounded enemy makes your relation go towards neutral or positive. Killing somebody has a bigger effect then healing somebody, so it’s hard to get it back to neutral so keep that in mind when you start a war. If you reach a city that’s populated by the faction you’re at war with they’ll attack you which makes it really hard if not impossible to trade with them (you might be able to run to a counter before you’re attacked). Some factions have many cities so that will make it a lot harder to buy your supplies so I advise to make sure you are self-sufficient before you start waging war.

Health, bodyparts and Medics
A standard character has 75 hp for blood and 100 for all other bodyparts. When the hp of a bodypart starts to drop it loses function. Damaged legs will decrease walking spead, so will a severely damaged head. Damaged arms will make it harder or impossible to fight. When it’s at 0 it stops working and when it’s at -100 you lose the limb. If a vital part like the head, blood, chest or stomach hits 0 you’re KO. If it reaches -100 you die.
If your character has a medikit he can heal himself or others. If he has a splint kit he can make arms or legs function (poorly) while under 0.
If you hold shift while clicking the medic button you make the selected character a permanent medic and he’ll automatically heal all his teammates and then himself after the fight is over.

Tactics
Having a bigger group of fighters is not necessarily better. If a group of fighters swarm an enemy they do not necessarily hit much more often then if 1 or 2 guys attack him. Often it is more efficient to let 2 strong fighters fight an enemy then to let 5 weak fighters attack him.
 
Building, Blueprints, Research

When you have a bigger stronger party that can withstand a couple of bandit attacks in a row without a real risk you can start thinking about making a settlement. I try to have about 10 characters and their combat stats around 10 and 2 permanent medics. Before you can make a settlement you’ll have to go to a store where you can buy building materials and blueprints. You don’t need any tools for now. If you plan to build far from an existing town you should also get a few backpacks for your men to hold enough building materials. You’ll need enough to make a Mine, a Stone Processor and a Generator because the processor uses electricity. (Generators don’t need fuel yet so you don’t have to worry about anything else at this point) (More information on which backpack to buy in the Trading section)

Blueprints
These are needed for certain buildings, weapons and armor. You can buy them and then use (rightclick) them to instantly learn them. If you have blueprints in your inventory and you also have a backpack right-click will make it go from inventory to backpack and vica versa. If you close your backpack you should be able to learn them. When you’ve bought and learned a blueprint you can click Build and hold your mouse on the building you’re planning to build. The mouse-over will show you how many materials you’ll need. That way you can bring enough building materials so you don’t have to go back and fourth to finish your first constructions.

First buildings
When you have bought the ‘Outpost Start-up Kit’ Blueprint you can build a Mine, Processor, Research Bench a small shack, Storage boxes and that’s all you need for now. You build by clicking build, clicking the building you want and placing it on the desired location. When you have placed the building press the right mouse button to stop placing more buildings, press space to quit build mode, wait for a couple of seconds, select a character, right click on the building and press space again. The game should now continue and the selected player should start building if he has building materials.
As soon as you have made the mine, generator and processor and you’ve produced enough building materials you should make a small shack to put a Research bench in. When you’re placing the bench it will turn green if it’s appropriately placed. This can be a bit tricky but it should definitely fit in there. When it’s done and you let 1 of your men work at the research bench by right-clicking it you should be able to start researching. When you press T you can research storage boxes for specific materials. For instance a Building Material storage will prove quite useful. You should research Storage and build some storage boxes for building materials. I usually start out with 5 of them (they hold 40 each) so I have a nice big buffer. (You can also research other things but more on that in the Research section). Just keep on mind that you don’t go ahead and do a lot of weapons research before you have read the Research section and the Mining, Crafting and Farming section.

Farms
When you have built the things mentioned above you can also get the How to do Farming’ blueprint. This will allow you to build Wheat and Hemp farms. You will need Wheat for Rum and Bread and you will need Hemp for fabrics and medicine. For everything you produce you will need storage room, but if you make fabrics which will be used almost immediately for production of weapons, medicine or something else it will automatically be delivered at the workstation where it’s needed. Same goes for wheat that will be used for rum and other resources. So you don’t need any/much storage rooms for those resources (But they only automatically get delivered where they’re needed if you have permanent jobs enabled. More on that in the Permanent Jobs section)

Research
As stated above, Pressing T shows the Research screen. This shows what things you can research like buildings, technology, better mining, ore mining and all sorts of things. As long as somebody’s working on the Research Bench the research continues and you can click what you want him to research. You can click several things and he will continue working until everything is researched (as long as he’s got a permanent job). This will earn him Science xp.
 
Mining, Crafting and Farming

I’m going to assume you know how to build and let people work at certain workstations by now. When you build mines and let somebody work there you might notice that a window in the left bottom corner says ‘1/4 workers’ for instance. This means that 4 people can work there at the same time. You can assign more then the max amount of people at the job, but that won’t increase production speed or efficiency. Mining can take a lot of people, but the upside is that you train a lot of characters Labouring skill at the same time. In case of stone mining you will need less people at the Processor then at the Mine. It takes a little while to find a good balance in work distribution, but usually you can let them work in a rather efficient way so you don’t have a lot of workers standing still because the output is full or the input is empty.
When you have permanent jobs (more info in next section) your workers will automatically empty the output when full and bring it to either the appropriate storage or another workstation where it can go in the input. For instance when farming wheat, it will go the the rum still, when the Mine output is full it will be brought to the Processor, etcetera.

Crafting
You can craft several types of objects like weapons, medikits, armour and clothing. This way you can become self sufficient if also mine the resources needed for crafting.

More sections to come:

Permanent Jobs
(Medic first, secondary jobs, engineer, Empty backpack)

Trading
(Backpack types, prices, fluctuation, stock, no shopkeepers, empty counters, private chests)

Final stuff

Word document

[afflikshon]

Great guide man, thanks for posting. It will help a lot of the beginners out there.

[Speijker]

Thank you for taking the time for writing this down, it was very helpfull.

If you ever do write a section about trading, I wouldn't mind tips for finding out what the busy trade-routes are, although I think just following caravans untill you find a good spot is probably the best way to go, and how trade and caravans work...

[OttoNL]

Thanks for the kind replies, will keep on updating and putting more info in there.

I added something about trading but will go specifically into what you were talking about. Kind of in a hurry right now so I'm just gonna post a comment I put in the steam-forum-topic of this guide.

-----

Made some updates in the File on Dropbox. Haven't had the chance to put it in this topic yet as I'm moving at the moment and making this topic requires a lot of BB codes.
So please check that out if you're looking for info you can't find in here.

Will update this topic in a couple of days.

[arthoz]

Keep up the effort...god knows we need a good guide. Hope they'll get this stickied

[Hatsune_Neko]

Keep up the effort...god knows we need a good guide. Hope they'll get this stickied

like it already is maybe?
hehehehe

[arthoz]

Heheh...you need the odd senile person once in a while...

[Chinsei]

I think disguises and how they work should be added to the list because i can't find any information on how they do >.<

[philthymcnasty]

I think disguises and how they work should be added to the list because i can't find any information on how they do >.<

My understanding, is that later on, when you wear a faction uniform, you can walk into a hostile town and not get attacked if your bluff skill is high enough.

This will be important when smuggling is added, because you will be able to sell drugs in towns.

[swillo]

I think disguises and how they work should be added to the list because i can't find any information on how they do >.<

My understanding, is that later on, when you wear a faction uniform, you can walk into a hostile town and not get attacked if your bluff skill is high enough.

This will be important when smuggling is added, because you will be able to sell drugs in towns.

You can actually do that now. there is a disguise % that shows in the character screen.
The more parts of the uniform that you have on the higher the %.
But if you are spotted they get really mad cause they know where you got the disguise from.
Same thing as when you are a slave. the more you look like one the more the guards will attack you.

[Candy Ninja Cat]

Helps out so much lol... I decided to just jump in the game and then experimental without reading up on it, felt so lost at first. Thank you for the starters guide, I need all the help I can get. xD

[yoshinoya2016]

I'm Aaron from Coventry West Midlands.Just registered today and have found a bunch of information here after spending almost 7 hours playing Kenshi. Basically and gameplay wise, This is extremely addictive and I might find myself sleeping late at night because of this. The music is good at the introduction but the rest are purely ambient. To be honest I enjoy playing this a lot more than my previous Mount And Blade due to the adventure packed and free of limits. The only downside i see is the framerate and poor optimization of the game. As of now there aren’t many quests or story missions, you just need survive and narrate your fairytale story but giving my two thumbs up for this game.

[toaster Assassin]

Welcome to Kenshi forums Aaron !

[Bandy]

Is the OP still valid for 1.0 or have [some] things changed? Is there a better or more complete new user guide somewhere?

[Hatsune_Neko]

Is the OP still valid for 1.0 or have [some] things changed? Is there a better or more complete new user guide somewhere?

this was originally made in 2013
so it is by far from representing the basics of game-play now as the game has changed a ton sicne this post was originally made.

[Q T Arbuthnot]

Is the OP still valid for 1.0 or have [some] things changed? Is there a better or more complete new user guide somewhere?

This guide was made for version 0.50.3. I started playing with version 0.93.28, and the game has changed out of all recognition since then.
As an example, the guide says that in the Rock Bottom scenario you start with a crappy sword , rag clothing and no money. When I started,, the Rock Bottom start left you naked, weaponless and moneyless, with an injured arm, within range of the Lone Shack near the Hub. In the release version you start naked, in the middle of a vast desert, with one arm completely missing and no possessions of any description.
In general terms, the guide may be of help, but you shouldn't rely on it for specific information.

[Bandy]

Apologies for being blunt, but perhaps time to clean house for the sake of new players who may have the demo and are on the fence about buying?

The link in the OP to a "More Recent Version" of the guide (Word doc) results in an Error (404)...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/195 ... Guide.docx

[Hatsune_Neko]

i do not delete posts due to them being non relevant or dated.
it is upto the OP to keep their topic updated and relevant.

[Berzerker Jay]

Under the info about farming, I believe it erroneously says that you need Wheat for Rum. Isn't Cactus necessary for Rum? And I actually haven't done it yet but I'm planning on it in my current game -- but isn't Wheat the ingredient for Grog?

[CommanderJRC]

Here I am thinking this was a new game, lol.

Loving it so far.