How do you play? - Tell us your way to play Kenshi.

[Nevermore]

Originally posted by Nevermore:

Since I am not the only one who got stuck in a rut I decided to make a Steam guide on this topic, which focuses on how to get the most out of the RPG potential in Kenshi.
I used my experience with RPGs in general and the way you guys play Kenshi and tried to find the common elements among them and wrote them down.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1600438020

If you want to tell us your ways on how to play Kenshi please do so. If you have questions or ideas to the guide, please write them there in the comments.

Greetings, well the short question is just: How do You play Kenshi?

I will elaborate. I have been playing Kenshi for quite some time now and I noticed a pattern in how I play.
I start out with a wanderer and run through the world until he gets so strong that ne needs companions to hunt down bigger prey. I pick up everything I can find and either make my guys into fast ninjas or fat samurais.
I loot ancient places and see so many books that I consider settling down and if choose to do that I build a city and then walk out again to loot more places.

And this is pretty much how it goes every time.
Even when I want to do something original, eventually I come back to this pattern. I believe it is because there are few ways of the world interacting with me. In my view the gameworld in Kenshi knows two main ways of dealing with the player. Buying my stuff and trying to beat me up in various ways.

I am in a rut. Always doing the same things. I assume there is much more to Kenshi and playing differently is all about the player himself. Imposing his own goals and limitations to his playstyle.
Also choosing his "morals" as I always try to be nice to every faction that doesn't attack me first.

That is why I ask you people for the way you play the game. Maybe I find something interesting.

[RandomDude]

My last 3 starts have been pretty similar. Start with a Shek. Train him till he can fight well vs a group of hungries (train him by getting beaten up a lot).

Recruit 2 more Shek at the nearest town, start fighting dust bandits. Upgrade gear to at least blue on all 3 if poss. Planks too if poss.

Then i start to wander around more, gathering more Shek to the cause until I have around a dozen fighting men and then I recruit greenalanders to farm/mine for me.

Eventually I'll head out as try to find ancients/engineering. Then I start to raid HN, get bored and stop playing so I can be more productive with my free time =p.

This playthrough I'm using 2 mods too. Increased faction unit limit and recruit prisoners.

I decided to be a bit more evil and force none-Shek to work the farms/mines. Most of them weren't even fed until lately and so they died of starvation.

There's always plenty of bandits trying their luck at my base so there's no end of fresh slaves. I have about 30 Shek fighters too.

[Techno86]

I just bought the game a few days ago so this is my first playthrough. I started as a human wanderer, and immediately recruited the two free followers. Now Im stuck in a " Well ♥♥♥♥, what now?" rut. I have one of them mining for money near Squin, one of them running back and forth through the town to get quicker, and my main has just now traveled to the city west of Squin, so we'll see how that goes. None of my people can fight anything, not even 1v1 lol.

[Excellion]

My most "common" playthrough is to keep one or two characters in a squad, usually leveling speed, stealth and crossbows on them and then going after whatever i fancy. There is a certain charm in having a two-man charge into cannibal lands and dropping enemy after enemy using two masterwork eagle's cross crossbows.

The most fun games are the ones where i include some roleplay and add some restrictions. Essentially i think of a character that would fit into Kenshi's world, give them a defining good and bad trait and then add some game restrictions based on those to spice a play trough up. Also when playing these characters i try to consider what they'd do in a situation as opposed to doing the most sane thing. And to keep things fun i play these as "iron man" scenario's where dead = dead.

A few examples of these:

The misandrist abolitionist
One game i played a female greenlander who used to live in the Holy Nation and sympathized with the Flotsam ninja's. Good traits were her being heroic in the sense she is against slavery, bad traits were her being both misandrist and xenophobic (A bit of a play on the Holy nations ethics).

Essentially the game rules were that she could never have male characters in her party, and that all recruited characters had to be freed slaves who were either greenlanders or scorchlanders (No recruitment in bars allowed). Also, whenever a male character insulted or attacked her that character had to die. Which led to some great gameplay as you would occasionally head into town and get insulted which could get... dicey at times.

The vengeful prince
Another playthrough was as a hive prince, who was outcast from his tribe. His good character trait was that he wished for more freedom for his fellow hive members. His bad trait was that he was highly narcissistic and essentially wanted to make a new hive with him being the "queen".

Game rules for this one were that only hive characters were allowed, though they might be recruited from bars. The end goal was the extermination of both the western and southern hive and all their villages, plus both queens. Also, the play trough had to be focused on the end goal (So no endless leveling before taking on the hives).

And so on and on
Sometimes these restrictions are a lot of fun, and sometimes i quickly start a new game because they end up being tedious. I played a group of hunters once who weren't allowed to loot anything except dead animals, and weren't allowed to steal gear. That was interesting for a while, but eventually it was a bit to restrictive to keep enjoying. Same for the playthrough were my main character a shek who was honor bound to accept any challenge and was forbidden to disengage from combat. Essentially that led to an "leeeroooy jenkins" playstyle were he'd charge into ANYTHING hostile, with the rest of the squad scrambling to drag him out before he died. Two beak thing nest charges later (which he survived but 10 squad members or so didn't) he was finally slain by blood spiders before his squad could save him, quite likely to the utter relief of said squad.

[Gaz]

I played Rockbottom Bugman, I had to hire someone from a bar who couldn't fight to find people who were injured by samurai patrols and sell them into slavery while my bugman mined copper. After many hours I got onto my feet and decided to investigate a red dot on my map (escaped slave) and came across the Holy Empire who rejected my robo arm and are mysoginistic ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who tried to kill me. I am now trying to build an army to wipe them off the planet.

You see to be on a power gaming path atm, trying to optimize your stats in the least amount of time as possible. Nothing wrong with it, but it's a limited playstyle that results in repetitive gameplay.

[rompier02]

Hi. Used the Wanderer start. Fight, become unconcious,woke up & patch the wounds & the cycle continues. Some loooooooong time later realized my MA & Dodge have reached 70. How about that? Pretty decent for my Main & Burn.

[[310] алксо]

Wanderer. I basically just bait Dust bandit, starving bandits back to the Hub. Let guards take em out, loot, and sell. Repeat. Once i have enough gold i run to any village with a chance of recruiting people for 3k and go back to the hub. Overencumber recruits w Dust bandit gear and weapons. I pace back and forth training strength. Buy a couple buildings do some research. Take dust bandits and place em in beds, close the doors and just keep healing em to train weaponry.
In my current run i did this to 100k gold and stacked materials to carry for my base, with about 12 people. Made it to worlds end, built a base and have 50k left over xd
First couple days are tedious but i dont like losing so getting beat up and losing isn't something i could do in my gameplay

[TehOuchies]

Current set of play throughs. Four game overs. Iron man rule set, self imposed. Starting as a single slave in rebirth with x5 attack slots, combat mod, nests and squad multiplier to max. Cannibals have been the bane of my characters.

[DeadlyPaperCut]

I always do the same thing...

Start by doing some money mining copper, recruit up to 10 guys then keep on mining untill they all got around 20 strenght and 40 athletic.

Then i start building my town little by little. I buy all the stuff i need untill i can go live there without having to run back to a town for supply.
I recruit even more people and finally have a big town that can't even defend themself because i did not boosted any fighting skill.

This is where i got all my fun, losing lots of people, losing almost every raid and now for a bigger challenge, I went near cannibal to lose even more people... And they are doing very well. (Im talking about cannibal)

[No gf]

Everytime I started a new run I eventually ended up building a base and later abandon the run because of boredom/issues.

1st run: Owned a couple of buildings in The Hub. Realized that I need isolated space to do "prisoner training" with. Combined with a lot of first run mistakes I just decided to start a new run instead.

2nd run: Base around the river area in HN land. HN did not like my non-human crew so they proceeded to send waves and waves of paladins to my gate every few days. I got too tired of having ~30 unconscious paladin outside my gate, so I decided to side with the feminist and destroy the HN. Unfortunately you cannot really destroy a nation in this game, and HN still exist and patrols keeps spawning even after their king died and the rebels took over their capital, so base still gets attacked everyday.

3rd run: Base in Swamp. Spiders can‘t beat down walls so its actually relatively safe. But I hate the fog and the whole drug manufacturing is not really that profitable so I moved on.

4th run: Base in Bast because I enjoy watching NPCs fighting each other, and Bast is a really good location for that because it spawns UC patrol, HN patrol, Merchants, slavers, rebels, ninjas, cannibals, and rarely some animals. It all starts with two patrols, then the slavers come in, and the fight only gets larger from that moment on. Unfortunately the NPCs just love to fight INSIDE my outpost, and the "throw people out" command bugs 9/10 time so there‘re always around 40 unconscious bodies from different faction just scattered all around my outpost in an endless knockout>wakeup>fight>knockout cycle.

I wish I can kick non-unconscious people out from my outpost without having to stab them in the chest. NPCs frequently get stucking in my outpost with "aimless" or "following leader" as their objective and I really don‘t appreciate that.

[linis]

I've always tried to play as close to what the game treats me as, a nobody. I train, join in a few light skirmishes between other factions, like outlaw farmers and united cities, and get stronger. Having a friendly faction nearby makes it easy to loot things like medical supplies and weapons/armor/etc to sell for food. Once I'm strong enough to take on a small group of low difficulty guys I try venturing further out, always keeping an eye on my leg health just in case I need to make a run for it.

With this in mind, combat profficiency comes naturally over time. I might look at building small fortifications in the future for farming, if the devs ever allow us more than a campsite without drawing the attention of a territorial faction.

(For the record, I've died countless times as a single person out there lol)

Once you get strong enough to venture out cautiously, the world really opens up with opportunities like the occassional bounties that pop up, which further boosts relations with the different factions. This becomes even more profitable when I decide to add one or two other people to train and follow me around. At that point making sure I have enough medical supplies and food to feed not just myself becomes the main priority, well that and avoiding the larger skilled and well equipped groups. (The Reavers)

[Nevermore]

Since I am not the only one who got stuck in a rut I decided to make a Steam guide on this topic, which focuses on how to get the most out of the RPG potential in Kenshi.
I used my experience with RPGs in general and the way you guys play Kenshi and tried to find the common elements among them and wrote them down.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1600438020

If you want to tell us your ways on how to play Kenshi please do so. If you have questions or ideas to the guide, please write them there in the comments.

[Qwib-Qwib]

Well, I started my game knowing full game that I'd settle down to build a little house in the woods, so most of my early days were spent wandering around looking for a good spot. I've just hired a second squad member I liked after something like 100 days of wandering alone and I don't plan on taking anyone else. I'm trying to become self-sufficient, so my little shack is getting a bit to big for my taste, but otherwise it's going along pretty well.

[Digstar]

I seem to use a similar formula each playthought though I have different starting points. I really enjoy city building so each of my towns through each playthough looks different even though it's roughly in the same area.

My current starting point as a two slave duo paid off well. Although it took a while to break out, one of my characters "earned" a 200k+ bounty. I collected the bounty then broke out again. This gave me a huge starting amount to quickly build up my faction.

[Stevepunk]

I started as two slaves in Rebirth about a week ago for my first game and after a lovely stay with free food and medical, I was skilled enough to leave. Some others joined me. We bought a small house in a Tech Hunter town, allied with Floatsam and explored the world. Never got raided. Recently defeated Phoenix (got the inquisitors second which made the completion dialogue nonsensical). Might be time to start a base..

[Strassenkater]

I had an enjoyable playthrough where my faction behaved very contrary. Paying taxes to UC? Praying with the HN? Bag checks at city gates? Refuse all these things and your game will take a different course.