Can't clear out Blister Hill

[ROCKETMAN JOE]

I killed all the guards and paladins in the throne room at Blister Hill, but when I load the game new guards just spawn in even when I'm occupying the vicinity, which is ridiculous. Furthermore, the Phoenix King is missing and I think some generic dude sits in the throne in his place. Not sure what happened to the King, but I can't clear the city out regardless.

I'm running UWE and RE as well as a number of mods, but I don't think the mods I use moved the King to another place. Has anyone else encountered this issue before?

It was incredibly difficult for my squad to clear out the Blister Hill throne, I don't really want to do it again.

[muffins]

In vanilla Kenshi you have to imprison/kill/hand over to their enemies city/faction leaders to get a world status change. Even then, guards will still respawn, though they might be from a different faction if the town goes to another faction. I don't know what though mod will do though.

[ROCKETMAN JOE]

For the Holy Nation, is it not enough to take out the Phoenix King (who is missing from my game for all I know)? I've already taken out one of the important characters, not sure how to track who is/isn't active in the world state.

[Limdood]

you might want to import your game instead of loading it next time. The Phoenix King could be stuck somewhere else bugged out somehow....And like muffins said, the character has to be SPECIFICALLY imprisoned or dead to force a state change (and Blister Hill will still belong to HN unless High inquisitors Valtena And Seta - from Stack and Okran's Shield - are ALSO dead or imprisoned....Blister Hill is the capitol, the Holy Nation has to completely fall for that city to change ownership...capturing Lord Phoenix only makes it destroyed, but still Holy Nation)

https://kenshi.fandom.com/wiki/Holy_Lord_Phoenix lists the world state changes that Holy Lord Phoenix affects. If Blister Hill isn't destroyed, then Lord Phoenix isn't dead or imprisoned, OR you have a mod that is changing/impacting something, OR your game is bugged. The import will fix the last of those, and might fix or allow you to fix the first of those. There's even a chance that if it's a mod, it'll force the mod to check the world states correctly - if the mod is currently messing something up.

[bunny de fluff]

Two other guys to take out, seta and valtena.

[ROCKETMAN JOE]

Ok, I imported my game and checked the throne room, and it did bring back Lord Phoenix, though I'm not sure on the statuses of the other two. I'm certain I did take out one of the other inquisitors because I specifically remember UC guards making comments on the dude while I was carrying him towards the cage.

Is there any downsides to constantly importing my game? I had to do it once before to fix an issue with Plonk and Screamer missing. Unfortunately, my prisoners disappeared which means I needed to find and train new ones. Importing again means I need to train new meatsacks for my recruits. Sigh... I guess I can always resort to mods for custom dummies.

Another thing I find annoying is that the loot respawns in places I've already cleared out. Not that big a deal I guess but it does make cheesing for AI cores very easy. Are there any other downsides to importing?

[muffins]

Importing just resets your world back to default but with your current squad/buildings/inventory carried over. It will reset all leader and town overrides. There are however checkbox options in the advanced options section of the import interface. Importing is usually used to fix things that are bugged out, using mods that require an import or cheesing it so you can recruit the same guy ten times.

[Limdood]

the game also has a tendency to compound it's own errors...
save files and loading times get worse as the ground gets littered with items that won't disappear, NPCs bug out and disappear, an unreachable building material locks your engineer in a permanent loop, etc.

Plus the game has stability issues as-is.

Importing your game every now and again can help clean up those issues.

As long as you keep your buildings, faction relationships, dead NPCs, etc. in the selectable options, your world states SHOULD stay the same....Seta or Valtena or whoever it was you captured should still register as captured (I know they register as dead if dead, so after turning in your world state changing NPCs for bounties, break em out and have em visit the fog islands with you :D). Your base will still be there, but the items on the ground will be gone. You'll keep the same relation with each faction.

You will clear all "angry shop owners" on an import....its a new shopkeeper...they don't recognize you as the dirty thief you are...yet. You also reset 1 time bonuses....allying with the holy nation for the 30k chalice and the seal that lets you tell patrols to follow you, for example, will reset, and you'll be able to acquire the items again. So yes, it is exploitable (though you don't have to look far for kenshi exploits), but there are also legitimate and helpful maintenance uses for it as well.