Skeleton recruitment

[Hartias]

Hello

So im kinda new to Kenshi

I loved the idea of making my own skeleton army

However i cant find ANY recruitable skeletons ...at all...like none

I got Sadneil and Burn, but those are unique, i want to expand my army by getting more non uniques

BUT there are just NONE in bars

From the frustration i checked other threads and tips from ppl

I checked Shark, the Hub, Crab Town, Mourn like 5 times now, because ppl said there are usually skeletons, alongside all bars i have ever seen in all the cities ive traveled..
But not a single recruitable skeleton

i also tried importing my save, but no luck

i am getting seriously frustrated im on day 60 i have almost 400k cats with only 3 skeleton guys and it just feels wrong, i know i could google more uniques, but i dont wanna ruin my exploration

can someone tell me what im doing wrong?

[bunny de fluff]

Do not check any bar for recruits for more than 2 times(check one time is enough). They mostly do not recycle. Go to other towns. I saw some skeleton recruits in the north east region of the map, in Heng, Stoat, Heft etc. Or try the south west region, Clownsteady etc.

[Hartias]

Originally posted by bunny de fluff:

Do not check any bar for recruits for more than 2 times(check one time is enough). They mostly do not recycle. Go to other towns. I saw some skeleton recruits in the north east region of the map, in Heng, Stoat, Heft etc. Or try the south west region, Clownsteady etc.

Allright i will travel there, thats actually last part of map i havent explored much, but still...are they that rare that i havent seen a single one in majority of the map?

Also ppl said that there is one always in shark in the dancing skeleton bar, but none for me ...?

[Rusted Cake]

You have done nothing wrong. In vanilla Kenshi skeletons are very rare. Vanilla Kenshi is a flawed game in many ways. But this is what mods are for, to improve a game as you see fit.

If growing your own skeleton army is what you desire I suggest the mod named-
Recruitable Prisoners.

You take a character you have kidnapped, toss them in a cage & try to recruit them.
This mod made doing a skeleton city possible for me.

Normal skeletons will be a bit hard to force into joining.
Broken skeletons, will basically require the solving of a code puzzle.

It is a great mod that helps bypass some Kenshi limitations.
It was made by a chinese fella so don't expect the english to be perfect, but it is still easily understood.

Pretty much everyone uses this mod.

I would also suggest an mod I consider as a patch for Kenshi. Viable Soldier Drone.

In vanilla Kenshi the devs messed up the stats on the soldier drones from the hives.
They were intended obviously for combat, but are literally the worse race for combat, or anything infact. They suck at everything. But this mod patches that issue.

[SkyofRunes]

Yeah skeles are rare as they are undeniably the most oped race in the game seriously the only major downside is the repairkits which only really affects a person in the early game. But I'm sure you've seen that which is why you want an army.

[SkyofRunes]

Tengu should be at the hub an dI think he is recruitable

[bunny de fluff]

other than the no need to eat, skeleton is not op at all. They cannot wear hat gear and many other protections. If all limbs replaced, the most op combat race is the shek.

[Rusted Cake]

Originally posted by DarkruneZ:

Yeah skeles are rare as they are undeniably the most oped race in the game seriously the only major downside is the repairkits which only really affects a person in the early game. But I'm sure you've seen that which is why you want an army.

Skeletons aren't op unless modded to remove their specific limitations.
According to forum moderator & other fellows. After the test were ran skeletons are the 3rd best melee warriors. Shek & Humans out class skeletons in the long run.
Skeletons after all cannot wear helmets, shirts or shoes.

The lack of armor makes skeletons less viable than others.

[SkyofRunes]

Originally posted by Rusted Cake:

Originally posted by DarkruneZ:

Yeah skeles are rare as they are undeniably the most oped race in the game seriously the only major downside is the repairkits which only really affects a person in the early game. But I'm sure you've seen that which is why you want an army.

Skeletons aren't op unless modded to remove their specific limitations.
According to forum moderator & other fellows. After the test were ran skeletons are the 3rd best melee warriors. Shek & Humans out class skeletons in the long run.
Skeletons after all cannot wear helmets, shirts or shoes.

The lack of armor makes skeletons less viable than others.

Lol yeah no the game even states in and of itself that they are better at pretty much everything which is why people fear them. They can take much more limb damage from the start they don't need to eat and are resistant to acid they are much harder to kill hell its even hinted at that they are the reason the world is at its end.

[Rusted Cake]

Alright dankrunez ur right & everyone else is wrong. Including the moderators. The modders & even the players.

Plz try not to miss inform the original poster of this topic.

[Undead Rufus]

OP, you might be interested in these.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1654641325

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1638392767

Be advised, the "Skeleton NPCs" mod in particular, over time, can truly lead you down the path of a Skeleton army.

[FeralDread]

Dont remember the name but there is a city full of just skeletons to the east of the map if I recall. Not sure if this was already mentioned as I forgot the name. I get all my recruits from there.

[Angry Canadian]

There's a skeleton town near the middle of the Black Desert.

[Faerador]

The only real reason skellies aren't as viable in combat as shek is the lack of head protection. A skellie in many ways is as good as a shek in combat were it not for the fact that a single headshot will take down a skellie, while a shek with a good crab helmet will shake it off like it's nothing. That's the only reason I prefer shek in combat.

After running squads of both through the game, I can say that the skellies were OP early game, while the shek extra hunger penalty made it difficult to run them initially. However, as I got my own economy under me and as I got better weapons and armor, my shek outclassed my skellies pretty handily by endgame.

Still, there's a lot of satisfaction to be had with a crew of skellies trained in martial arts just going ham. You can get a bit of head protection for them with certain armor options, and that helps increase their survivability.

That being said, skellie recruits in vanilla (apart from the 3 uniques you can always find) can spawn in The Hub, Shark, and Crab Town, according to the FCS. Your best option is Shark, with 4 possible skellie recruit spawns in the list of choices.

According to the code, no non-unique skellies spawn in World's End, BDC, or Flats Lagoon (though it would make sense, lore-wise), and skellies do not appear to be a choice for slaves in the UC region either. So, if you're looking for a skeleton army and you don't want to mod your game, it's going to take a few imports.

I have a squad of 7 skellies guarding my gate in one playthrough, but it took a few imports to get those 4 non-uniques. One came from the Hub (I got lucky), and the other 3 were all from Shark. I didn't have much luck with Crab Town, plus it's a really remote place to check.

However, it occurs to me that you could place a character in all 3 locations, and then just save, import, and re-load/re-import after a quick check if there were no skellie recruits, or get your recruits, save, and repeat the process to your heart's content until you get enough skellies.

That or mod the files or get a mod. I added the potential for a few skellie recruits in my own custom mod in sensible places (BDC, Flats Lagoon, World's End, etc.). It's kind of nice having the potential for running a solo-race run with all 4 races. I didn't add skels to the slave lists, though. That didn't seem lore-friendly to my thinking.

[Hartias]

Originally posted by Faerador:

The only real reason skellies aren't as viable in combat as shek is the lack of head protection. A skellie in many ways is as good as a shek in combat were it not for the fact that a single headshot will take down a skellie, while a shek with a good crab helmet will shake it off like it's nothing. That's the only reason I prefer shek in combat.

After running squads of both through the game, I can say that the skellies were OP early game, while the shek extra hunger penalty made it difficult to run them initially. However, as I got my own economy under me and as I got better weapons and armor, my shek outclassed my skellies pretty handily by endgame.

Still, there's a lot of satisfaction to be had with a crew of skellies trained in martial arts just going ham. You can get a bit of head protection for them with certain armor options, and that helps increase their survivability.

That being said, skellie recruits in vanilla (apart from the 3 uniques you can always find) can spawn in The Hub, Shark, and Crab Town, according to the FCS. Your best option is Shark, with 4 possible skellie recruit spawns in the list of choices.

According to the code, no non-unique skellies spawn in World's End, BDC, or Flats Lagoon (though it would make sense, lore-wise), and skellies do not appear to be a choice for slaves in the UC region either. So, if you're looking for a skeleton army and you don't want to mod your game, it's going to take a few imports.

I have a squad of 7 skellies guarding my gate in one playthrough, but it took a few imports to get those 4 non-uniques. One came from the Hub (I got lucky), and the other 3 were all from Shark. I didn't have much luck with Crab Town, plus it's a really remote place to check.

However, it occurs to me that you could place a character in all 3 locations, and then just save, import, and re-load/re-import after a quick check if there were no skellie recruits, or get your recruits, save, and repeat the process to your heart's content until you get enough skellies.

That or mod the files or get a mod. I added the potential for a few skellie recruits in my own custom mod in sensible places (BDC, Flats Lagoon, World's End, etc.). It's kind of nice having the potential for running a solo-race run with all 4 races. I didn't add skels to the slave lists, though. That didn't seem lore-friendly to my thinking.

Thanks for the tips

I guess i was just extremely unlucky, because trust me ...i was looking thoroughly across the whole map, each and every bar, but not i single non unique, even in Shark which kinda kicked me off to make this thread
Since then i said to myself f*ck it im gonna use a mod

I went with recruitable prisoners so i once in a while go hunting for a broken skeleton to add in my squad

My only gripe is the fact that the prisoners i recruit have the original stats, so in case of Broken skeletons its 50 in most stats which i rly dislike, because i like to build up my guys from bottom
So i balanced for myself in a way that i recruit only one after long time it would take to train the previous one to those stats

But yeah its kinda sad that the skellies are THAT rare, i guess devs felt like they are too powerfull, when i finish with these guys i plan on trying new game as Shek...i will see how much different it will be

[Faerador]

I believe ya. I ran through a lot of the world looking for skellie recruits multiple times too, before I just decided to peek under the hood at the code and stop wasting my time. I was sad to see so few options for them. Just 3 locations, and pretty poor spawn chances too. Their probability weights make it so that you're not likely to see a skellie recruit at all anywhere.

For example, Crab Town has 2 skeleton recruit possibilities out of 12 total, in vanilla Kenshi: one with a weight of 2 and another with a weight of 5. The total weights for all possible recruits from that list is 61. You get exactly 3 selections. Odds are not in your favor.

It's worse for the Hub, which has almost exactly the same recruit list, just with the addition of Hobbs for a 13th character, with a weight of 5, giving a total weight to the Hub list of 66. Even worse odds for getting one of the two skellie recruits!

Shark is the best option, as it chooses 6 recruits from a list of 16 possible, and 4 of those on the list are skeletons. Two of those skeletons have nice weights too (a 10 and a 15 respectively, while the other two have 1s as their weights, meaning good luck).

This is why most people who want to preserve their vanilla status just camp Shark and continually re-import there while looking for skellies. You're increasing your odds a bit by branching out to the Hub and Crab Town, but not a whole lot.