Skeletons

[Wehr Wulf]

So, where does everyone get skeleton recruits? Ive seen multiple forums and stuff online where people have discussed making a skeleton army and wiping out mankind or using them for labor.... I cant find a single one.
Any ideas?

Is it even really possible to get a decent sized crew of them? Im talking like, around 20 ish?

[mk_thot]

Finding skeleton recruits in bars can be tricky, mostly because the recruits that show up are different for everyone. You can't simply import and hope every recruit spawns as a skeleton. There are a few methods for getting them that don't require 100 imports though:

- You can find some non-recruitable skeleton drifters in U.C. cities, if you can KO them with the assasination skill you can dump them with some slavers and buy their freedom for a chance to join you (there are also some that spawn as wanderers, they're rare but I don't think there's a limit to them).

- If you have a greenlander in your party you can wander around the mountains/valley North of Rebirth, if one of the Skeletons there sees them there's a small chance you can recruit them (basically go with the most "f*ck the Holy Nation" answers). You can tell if they'll give you a chance to recruit them if they address the "human" directly (they'll say something along the lines of "Do with me what you will"). I believe they have to be alone (not spawned in a group).

- Also in that area, you could simply stealth KO them and dump them with slavers and buy them (their attack and defense need to under 25 for them to join, I believe).

- There are 2 skeleton recruits that spawn in the swamps. (almost always)

- You also have the 3 unique recruits Burn, Sadneil, and Agnu.

- There are also mods you can use, but that kind of takes the challenge out of it.

[Hartias]

Hello

I had the same questions when i started playing Kenshi

Basically you cant really make big army of skeletons in vanilla Kenshi

There are around 5 uniques that you can always get, but after those there arent much, there is a very slight chance they can spawn in some bars (They dont change after you visit the bar)

So one thing ive seen ppl do is to run in some bars, see if there are skeletons...after that import save (which resets NPCs and gives a chance for skeleton to spawn in bar again)...
However thats rather tedious and long process

I will link my thread i made a few weeks back which has perfect answer for these questions
https://steamcommunity.com/app/233860/discussions/0/1639793203760536200/

So yeah if you rly wanna make it big with skeleton only squad you will most likely have to resort to mods....

EDIT : Yeah you can also try the slavery tricks the mk_thot suggested, but i dont like doing the slavery cheese, breaks the immersion a bit for me

[Faerador]

I learned a bit more since making that post by poking more into the code, and with a really helpful tip from Shidan.

Importing for skellies didn't take that long after that. I now have 11 (the 5 uniques plus 6 more), which is more than enough to run a good squad. Had I done the "Nobodies" start or the "Traders" start, I believe you can also pick your starting characters to be skeletons as well, which would have given me 16 skellies at this point.

At any rate, as was mentioned, you have the 3 named uniques and the 2 non-named swamper skellie uniques in Shark who have good odds of showing. After that it's Hub, Crabtown, and World's End as your best chances for skeletons. Place a character in each city. On a fresh import, sweep through the bars of each city. If you see a skeleton, great! Recruit him and you're golden.

Shark has two more non-unique skeletons that can show up as recruits, but their odds are abysmal. You can place another character in that city, however, just to take advantage of all possibilities.

If not, however, to get fresh characters on your next import, you need to purchase at least one character from each bar (and dismiss him/her if you don't want another character). Otherwise, you'll just get the same characters on the next import, as recruit spawns are determined by seed.

Shidan mentioned this to me, which was why if you just run in, see no one interesting, and simply save and re-import without recruiting anyone, you're going to see no changes in recruits for your next import. You need to refresh the opportunities by hiring someone in between.

[lPaladinl]

Originally posted by mk_thot:

Finding skeleton recruits in bars can be tricky, mostly because the recruits that show up are different for everyone. You can't simply import and hope every recruit spawns as a skeleton. There are a few methods for getting them that don't require 100 imports though:

- You can find some non-recruitable skeleton drifters in U.C. cities, if you can KO them with the assasination skill you can dump them with some slavers and buy their freedom for a chance to join you (there are also some that spawn as wanderers, they're rare but I don't think there's a limit to them).

If you're going that route you might as well just install the mod to let you recruit prisoners from prisoner cages and take them to a base.

The chance for a slave to join you after buying them is so abysmally low that it's a large money sink.

[Raymond]

it is not possible to build a skeleton army without import, There is less than 10 recruit-able skeletons on the map.

[mk_thot]

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

Originally posted by mk_thot:

Finding skeleton recruits in bars can be tricky, mostly because the recruits that show up are different for everyone. You can't simply import and hope every recruit spawns as a skeleton. There are a few methods for getting them that don't require 100 imports though:

- You can find some non-recruitable skeleton drifters in U.C. cities, if you can KO them with the assasination skill you can dump them with some slavers and buy their freedom for a chance to join you (there are also some that spawn as wanderers, they're rare but I don't think there's a limit to them).

If you're going that route you might as well just install the mod to let you recruit prisoners from prisoner cages and take them to a base.

The chance for a slave to join you after buying them is so abysmally low that it's a large money sink.

Drifter faction skeletons are about 10k, and Skeleton faction skeletons are 20k. The high cost off-sets how OP they are compared to the other races. Really that's just turning in 2 Sand Ninja Jounin (probably butchered that spelling) for their bounties and selling their gear. It's more immersive than putting someone in a cage and using "hacking" to make them join.

Originally posted by YariMurai:

it is not possible to build a skeleton army without import, There is less than 10 recruit-able skeletons on the map.

Yes it is, using the methods I described.

[lPaladinl]

Originally posted by mk_thot:

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

If you're going that route you might as well just install the mod to let you recruit prisoners from prisoner cages and take them to a base.

The chance for a slave to join you after buying them is so abysmally low that it's a large money sink.

Drifter faction skeletons are about 10k, and Skeleton faction skeletons are 20k. The high cost off-sets how OP they are compared to the other races. Really that's just turning in 2 Sand Ninja Jounin (probably butchered that spelling) for their bounties and selling their gear. It's more immersive than putting someone in a cage and using "hacking" to make them join.

Originally posted by YariMurai:

it is not possible to build a skeleton army without import, There is less than 10 recruit-able skeletons on the map.

Yes it is, using the methods I described.

Honestly I don't see what's immersive about assaulting people, selling them into slavery, only to buy them back as slaves from the same slavemonger, and then hope they want to join you for whatever reason despite the fact that you're the reason they were enslaved in the first place.

You also just bleed money doing this. You get 400 cats for selling the slave, just to buy them back for many times the cost... why did you even bring them to a slavemonger in the first place? Why would you not just try to enslave them yourself and cut out the pointless middleman?

Hell, you don't even do it for Slavery, so why even bring slavery into the equation in the first place?

There's nothing immersive about this. It's just backwards game mechanics.

[mk_thot]

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

Honestly I don't see what's immersive about assaulting people, selling them into slavery, only to buy them back as slaves from the same slavemonger, and then hope they want to join you for whatever reason despite the fact that you're the reason they were enslaved in the first place.

As opposed to assaulting people, sticking them in your own cage and spam-asking them join until they do?

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

You also just bleed money doing this. You get 400 cats for selling the slave, just to buy them back for many times the cost... why did you even bring them to a slavemonger in the first place? Why would you not just try to enslave them yourself and cut out the pointless middleman?

a.) Cats aren't exactly hard to come by if you know what your doing. I can make over 10k just traveling between the U.C. cities and turning in bounties. (Sand Ninjas = 4k, Jounin = 6k-9k, Empire Peasants = 2k, Outlaw Rebels 800-3k)
b.) You're not actually selling them to the slavers (they won't join you if you do), you just knock them out and slavers come along and catch them. It does happen on it's own, but doing it yourself cuts out the middleman and speeds things up. It's not perfectly immersive. But neither is a mod that lets you recruit literally anybody, including faction leaders, by locking them in a cage and asking nicely.

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

There's nothing immersive about this. It's just backwards game mechanics.

It follows the rules of the game, unlike mods that rewrite the rules simply for the players benefit. Not everybody likes to use mods, especially when the most often asked question in the bugs page is "what mods are you using?"

[Hartias]

Originally posted by mk_thot:

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

Honestly I don't see what's immersive about assaulting people, selling them into slavery, only to buy them back as slaves from the same slavemonger, and then hope they want to join you for whatever reason despite the fact that you're the reason they were enslaved in the first place.

As opposed to assaulting people, sticking them in your own cage and spam-asking them join until they do?

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

You also just bleed money doing this. You get 400 cats for selling the slave, just to buy them back for many times the cost... why did you even bring them to a slavemonger in the first place? Why would you not just try to enslave them yourself and cut out the pointless middleman?

a.) Cats aren't exactly hard to come by if you know what your doing. I can make over 10k just traveling between the U.C. cities and turning in bounties. (Sand Ninjas = 4k, Jounin = 6k-9k, Empire Peasants = 2k, Outlaw Rebels 800-3k)
b.) You're not actually selling them to the slavers (they won't join you if you do), you just knock them out and slavers come along and catch them. It does happen on it's own, but doing it yourself cuts out the middleman and speeds things up. It's not perfectly immersive. But neither is a mod that lets you recruit literally anybody, including faction leaders, by locking them in a cage and asking nicely.

Originally posted by lPaladinl:

There's nothing immersive about this. It's just backwards game mechanics.

It follows the rules of the game, unlike mods that rewrite the rules simply for the players benefit. Not everybody likes to use mods, especially when the most often asked question in the bugs page is "what mods are you using?"

Its mostly about imagination...especially with the robots, lets say you capture them and reprogram them or something like that...

I just cant think of anything in game, that would somehow explain the slavery trick

And yeah it can get pretty op if you just hoard 20 skeletons right off the bat, but with self moderation, you can recruit once in a long while and its all fine

Also nobody is saying that its wrong to use that trick, you say its good, because its available in vanilla game, however its kinda unexplainable in game universe, while the mod is

To summarize....everyone has their own taste and thats what mods are perfect for

[lPaladinl]

To each their own, I just don't understand the argument that it's somehow more immersive. I think it's nonsensical and therefore breaks immersion, because it's a dumb scenario that you would only find in a video game.

The prisoner recruitment mod is balance-breaking for sure. But if you're going to put in all of the time and effort to recruit slaves... I feel like it's the better alternative.

I wouldn't say this if I thought the slavery system in Kenshi was more fleshed out and didn't have such abysmal chances to have them want to join you as free people. The chances of them joining you are at least as low as when you save prisoners. And Prisoners you save would have a lot more reason to appreciate your efforts and have desire to join you. You're not actively an actor in their terrible situations.

Anyways, in short, despite the flaws of the mod, I think it's more immersive in this case, and saves you a ton of time.

[mk_thot]

Originally posted by Hartas:

Its mostly about imagination...especially with the robots, lets say you capture them and reprogram them or something like that...

I just cant think of anything in game, that would somehow explain the slavery trick

Like I said, it's not perfect. Skeletons do get beat up in the game, and slavers do catch them, this just speeds things along.

Originally posted by Hartas:

And yeah it can get pretty op if you just hoard 20 skeletons right off the bat, but with self moderation, you can recruit once in a long while and its all fine

I mean, unless your save scumming, you're only going to get one every once in awhile, plus it's something to save up for. Once you've outfitted your current squad with the best gear, what else is there to spend money on, besides food?

Originally posted by Hartas:

Also nobody is saying that its wrong to use that trick, you say its good, because its available in vanilla game, however its kinda unexplainable in game universe, while the mod is

From what I've seen of the mod, there's your basically doing the same thing but with no real cost to you, there's no real penalty for failing. Kenshi's not a perfect game, there's a lot you can't do in the vanilla game that you can do with mods. But there's still a lot you can do without mods. It just irks me to see every question on the forum turn into:

Q: "How do I do this?"
A: "MODS! It's the only way!"

This is still a great game without mods, it's just sad to see that people would rather take the easy way out than actually challenge themselves.

[lPaladinl]

Originally posted by mk_thot:

Originally posted by Hartas:

Its mostly about imagination...especially with the robots, lets say you capture them and reprogram them or something like that...

I just cant think of anything in game, that would somehow explain the slavery trick

Like I said, it's not perfect. Skeletons do get beat up in the game, and slavers do catch them, this just speeds things along.

Originally posted by Hartas:

And yeah it can get pretty op if you just hoard 20 skeletons right off the bat, but with self moderation, you can recruit once in a long while and its all fine

I mean, unless your save scumming, you're only going to get one every once in awhile, plus it's something to save up for. Once you've outfitted your current squad with the best gear, what else is there to spend money on, besides food?

Originally posted by Hartas:

Also nobody is saying that its wrong to use that trick, you say its good, because its available in vanilla game, however its kinda unexplainable in game universe, while the mod is

From what I've seen of the mod, there's your basically doing the same thing but with no real cost to you, there's no real penalty for failing. Kenshi's not a perfect game, there's a lot you can't do in the vanilla game that you can do with mods. But there's still a lot you can do without mods. It just irks me to see every question on the forum turn into:

Q: "How do I do this?"
A: "MODS! It's the only way!"

This is still a great game without mods, it's just sad to see that people would rather take the easy way out than actually challenge themselves.

I'm not saying mods are the only way for anything. But I've tried going down that route of buying slaves hoping to recruit them as party members and free them. At times you get maybe 1 recruitment every 20+ slaves purchased. At that rate you are out of tens of thousands of cats per recruitment, you will empty out the slave market if you don't constantly capture people, dump them off, and then immediately buy them back, and you waste many hours of real time playing the game doing something that puts you at a major cost deficit with no real benefit.

The way Kenshi is designed mechanically does not make it appealing to use the slave market. You get paid garbage for handing people off. You spend as much money as it would take to get normal recruits to buy one slave, and then you're stuck with a useless NPC following you around until they make their decision to run off or stick with you, which is at such a low percentage I wouldn't be surprised if it was single digits.

And for the record: I don't even use any mods! I play the game vanilla, and that's one of the few mods that caught my eye because I know exactly how difficult it is to get recruits that you want for roleplay reasons.

[Bedelguese]

Skeleton recruits only spawn in 4 places.

World's End
Shark
The Hub
Crab Town

To find skeleton recruits in these towns you must go through all the recruits in the bars, if you don't find a skeleton YOU MUST HIRE THE NON-SKELETON RECRUITS THERE TO REFRESH THE RECRUIT POOL before importing. If you don't hire anyone and import you will get the same (albeit different looking) recruit backgrounds. Shark is your best bet as it has two "unique" skeletons there that have their own recruitment dialogue and they have a relatively high chance of spawning instead of other recruits (you may have to hire/dismiss to find them though you have a good chance of finding at least one on your first visit to Shark if not both of them together). Once you recruit them they will not spawn again and you will have to keep hiring/dismissing and importing until you find generic skeleton recruits in any of the four listed towns.

There are also the 3 unique Skeletons with guaranteed spawns. Burn in his tower in the Floodlands, Agnu in the Tower of Abuse in Venge, and Sadneil in Black Desert City in the Deadlands.

[Zee_]

Originally posted by Hellinghof:

There are also the 3 unique Skeletons with guaranteed spawns. Burn in his tower in the Floodlands, Agnu in the Tower of Abuse in Venge, and Sadneil in Black Desert City in the Deadlands.

If you get to Burn's tower and Burn is nowhere to be found... he's likely dead. Make a save right there then import your game with dead NPCs unchecked.

Burn can spawn just outside his door, which can lead to wandering spiders killing him.

Also, make sure you have Beep in your squad when you go for Agnu. There's some unique dialog for that event. Its a good idea to keep those two paired up in general.