What stats make you a "pretty good" fighter in this game?

[Revontulet]

So, I have been grinding away at my combat skills. I'm not super focused on that. Trying to stay patient etc. But I do have several guys with like 15-20 skill in various weapons and the same in melee. I've got a couple guys getting Str into the 30's and one guy with 50 Str.

They all still suck pretty hard!

I'm just curious.... What does it take to feel somewhat competent?

For instance, what stats would one guy need to go head to head with 1 Samurai Guard and have a high chance of beating him?

I've heard people claiming that they go everywhere and wreck mobs with one guy, and that sounds great and all, but I'm just curious how long it takes to stop UTTERLY SUCKING.

[Bragdras]

60ies or so to really start taking on anything, 40-50ies is just fine tho, but gear is just as important as the skills of the user, if not more under certain situations.

[Erei]

It's been a while, but from personal experience, I started to leave the safety of the town/guards once I was able to fight the bandits on my own without help, around the 20 stats, and blue gear.
I made a small outpost, but that was easier back then (no demand and assault), and started to explore around. Cleaning ruins was not the easiest task, but if you go smart and slow, entirely doable. I used to kill spiders one by one, and I had a bed outside to rest the wounded.


As for samurai guard, they are tough. My now full squad of 40-50ish stats guys in full masterwork/edge3 gear can have trouble against one squad of their elite. Regular are fine though.

But that's whole experience is when you have a squad, I never played as a single character, beside trying to fight with one of my own once in a while for fun, but obviously it's going to be a lot harder. I know that around 40 you can handle most threats alone, with the exception of city guards, leviathan, and large numbers of tough beasts (like gutter nest).

IMO, with a squad, 20ish is when you stop being useless. 40ish is when you start to be good.

Also note that unless you start to grind real tough opponent (IE leviathans, Bugmaster in a cage...), 40 is the "soft cap". It took me way, way longer to reach 45 from 40 than to reach 40 from 0. And it include some leviathan beating.

[rat bastard]

Fight cannibals non-stop for less than a week (real time) and your guys should come as untouchable divine beings beings...well not really, but it should get you to at least 60, which is were things get really good, also, the str and dex are important, but the most important skills are the atk and def ones, those determine if you land hits or block hits.

An order of which skill is the most important from 1 to 5 IMO would be:

1 Def

2 Atk

3 Dex

4 Str

5 The weapon skills


The def is the hardest one for me to get, you need to fight someone, wait for them to hit and then pray you don't blackout or die if you don't block the atk, it's just too risky to get up early on if you are playing solo, so i usually skip this one until i get at least one buddy to patch me up if things don't go as planned but trust me, leveling this up pays really really well.


Atk is too easy to level up safely just get into a fight with some bandit chump then order your character to strike him, then wait to see which of you is going to play the striking animation first if he is run, if you are let it hit then run, you just repeat this until he's dead or you feel ashamed for doing something like this and get a crossbow instead, a more legit way to get it up would be if you go near the swamp and beat some turtles you should get some not sucky levels (15 - 20) pretty quickly or even 30 if you go hardcore on those poor things.


Dex is more important to a fighter than Str, you should only consider leveling Str if your weapon type is a blunt or a heavy one and even then i wouldn't advise it, Dex determines how fast you atk and block, with a high enough lv of Dex you should be able to block as fast as you atk and viceversa and the more fast you block and atk the less hits your opponent will get on you and if you use a heavier weapon your overall combat speed will go from pretty bad to at least decent enough, so get your hands on a katana or a sabre and train the hell out of it.

Str is a more risky approach to battling, you only get your Str up first if you are insane enough to think you can one hit kill everything with a falling sun while only having 10 atk and 6 def, if your approach is to kill masses without leaving them a chance to respond, go with this, it would be absurdly broken but luckily blocking is a thing when it comes to most humanoid npcs and your worst enemy when it comes to playing this way, it's also important to carry more stuff without getting slowed down but other than to carry the current armor and weapon you are wearing you shouldn't bother going past that unless you are done with the 1 2 and 3 skills.

Weapon skills are the least important ones, you are really never going to be playing with a single weapon from start to end unless you roleplay or handicap yourself, when you start you go by the colors, without paying much attention to the weapon type, just don't worry too much about these since they will naturally go up and it's better to split them as much as possible so you get some decent level with most of them, at lategame the weapon type becomes more relevant since you'll want to take what's best on the area you are planning to go, like polearms if you plan to go to some animal infested area or a hacker to wreck some skeletons, or a heavy weapon to bypass samurai and holy armor.

[Anjirusensei]

from what I found out about strength, it is actually pretty easy to afk train it. you do need a base and hire some mercenaries. have everyone who is gonna fight, carry bags of iron and follow the leader and patience is all you need. I got a weak slave that I saved from the slavery camp and after some time.. she's super ripped in muscles lol.

going from 1 to 80 while I do my other things is crazy. I'm sure there are probably better ways but this is a safe way to train strength.

[Tempest]

I havent tried this in a while,but you used to be able to train str pretty much automatically.
Just need a ton of weight,2 chars,and a place where they can move around in continuous circles,without bumping into things they cant get past.

Simply load each of the 2 chars up with max weight,then issue each the bodyguard order for the other.The 2 chars will start to circle each other,and basically keep doing it til some order (like get food) overrides the bodyguard order,OR they bump into something they cant get past.

if you have them do this in sneak mode,by a caged prisoner,they will auto train stealth with this same method.

I trained stealth from like 5 to 70 for 2 chars without ever leaving the rooftop i had them doing this on.

[timde16]

Well it’s actually way more fun just being a noob in this game and stop looking for ways to power leveling it, cause there are many ways , Defence is the easiest skill to get u can get 0-50 in 7 mins, or 7 hours in game, strength is trained by time and it takes 5 hours to hit 70 , but please don’t and please take out those fast ways

[Hobo Misanthropus]

I feel sorry for power levelers, you rob yourself of a better game experience.. You're basically skipping the entire progression curve of the game and neutralizing 70% of the content by making it an irrelevant irritant instead of a logical stepping stone.

I remember I killed Morrowind by doing this. Just start the game, steal Sword of White Woes, and then power train all your stats to God level before even doing mission 1. "FUN"

[AnimeCatGirl]

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

I feel sorry for power levelers, you rob yourself of a better game experience.. You're basically skipping the entire progression curve of the game and neutralizing 70% of the content by making it an irrelevant irritant instead of a logical stepping stone.

I remember I killed Morrowind by doing this. Just start the game, steal Sword of White Woes, and then power train all your stats to God level before even doing mission 1. "FUN"

Morrowind reference is the best. You're not completely wrong I just think you're taking it a bit extreme, you can use power level techniques without killing the fun at least in my experience. Especially in games like Kenshi which have quite a lot to do/learn. I kind of compare it to Dwarf Fortress a little in that the 'cheesy' things don't really take away from the 'fun' of the game more so make something nuissanced a little easier but you still end up getting curb-stomped as a new player due to lack of actual knowledge... i.E breaking into Hell in dwarf fortress, or fogmen eating your near immortal power leveled character in Kenshi

[Solar Pilgrim]

I find when you get all of them around 30ish you can usually hold your own, especially if you're in a reasonaly large group 8-12. As long as you have a mixed bag of weaponry/roles, including ranged you should be taking down at least half of the encounters in a 1 gorup vs 1 group situation.

Different weapon types are important due to the animation differences. Stunning, AoE etc. And a bolt to the back of enemies trying to swing at your melee characters for interruption.

And also very important, encirclement. Either do the encircling, or if that isn't possible just make sure it doesn't happen to you. Keep pulling characters back if they start to get bogged down by enemy fighters.

[Stanley]

You can reach 80+ in def quite easily if you train against a high level prisoner since every successful hit / damage you take gives you loads of exp. I d' say training dex and attack over 70 is quite the grind.

Str you can pretty much afk train to around 75 before it becomes a chore and uber grindy

[Erei]

A major part of Kenshi is growing your characters/faction. Power leveling simply remove that aspect. Power leveling rookie late game, I can understand, but early game ? That's a good way to ruin the fun.
It's not like there is a big endgame to enjoy. The closest to endgame is probably to destroy the major factions around, but it can be repetitive.

You're not power leveling so you can join your guild on some raid. You're simply skipping most of the content.

Also, Kenshi is very big on taking risks. Especially since for a lot of encounters, losing is not dying, it's very lenient. What risks is there left when your guys are killing machines ?


Also, at this point, you may consider editing the savegame. Much less tedious than power leveling, for the same result.