What do you long term players do in this game?

[MC858]

I really enjoyed this game for the first 50-60 hours but now im just catching myself launching the game and just watching my settlement do its thing. The miners mine, the crafters craft and the traders trade.... i have literally nothing to do but defend against the holy nation attacks which get easier and easier.

I tried attacking one of their cities but the only payoff is loot and i have more money than ill ever need. I dont buy anything but materials anyway.

I have explored maybe 25% of the map but i dont know if its even worth exploring the rest. I just want the research books and havent had any crazy good loot thats been worth my trek to any other part of the map

I have like 7-8 techs to research but i dont even care about those anymore

So what do you guys with a lot of hours in the same game do? Just maintain what you have going on?

* I have about 70 people in my camps and i have most of the unique named companions. Am i basically done ?

[_rN x™]

I just wage war against the HN and as soon as I see they are about to collapse I retreat ane let them recover. I have my huge base where everything is all rainbows and unicorns the people living there think the world is a wonderfull place then I have my elite team that travel all over fighting everything they can find I do things like everyone has a uniform such as soldiers as a dress code and so on new recuits go through a training course I set up I keep the Dust King in a cage to train my new soldiers. I enjoy attacking HN mines just to free the slaves. Kenshi is a game that you just have to create your own story I guess.

[Kurteous]

Wander. Explore. Train. Survive.

On a serious note, I'm trying to max out my character's stat as high as possible. I also already set myself goals to build my varieties of groups through their perceived skills from the personalities and expressions I observed.

I have realized that two of my characters has hankerings for Gristle Flaps.

[happy]

I haven't read the previous posts.

I'm at 1K hours now, and my bases are just makeshift walls, a food store, 2 general storages, a bughouse.

I don't craft.

I roleplay every character and only run squads of 1-6, and play on max bloodloss rate.

I focus on characters and character adventures. sometimes I play with a no map mod.

when i get a batch of new recruits I play them exclusively up to the 30s, then switch and level up another squad to the 50s.

When I lose someone, I don't replace him/her, for the rest of the run, the squad remains as it is, so I have some squads of 3, but do not lower expectations.

When I reach a point where I clearly can sustain people(either when I have enough characters plus the required techs, or when i'm just filfthy rich), I import and put hunger sliders up to 8. This allows me to not have my expeditions ruined by an empty food backpack.

And I spice up the game by tweaking local populations(flat's lagoon sieged by skin bandits, Mourn swarmed by beak things, The hook invaded by fishmen, HN with fogmen etc)

Two days ago, I took all my guys and girls and decided to try a base in sonorous dark, (all in the 50s, 21 characters), the base lasted 4 hours^^, skin harvests are dangerous, but Big skin harvest is worse^^.

I play from the start with nearly all compatible endgame mods, plus my own tweaks.

Bases, once done succesfully, are boring and tend to shackle you down, kiling any adventure you might have, so I recommand bases down to the bare minimums. same goes for crafting, if you have to loot or buy every piece of armor, the economy changes a lot and looting ruins become necessary for a decent time.

[Gerustroncio]

Well, first things first, I'm not shaming you for possibly "cheating" or anything, I did it at first, I think everyone does it to some extent :P

But yeah, try starting a new playthrough without "cheating" this time, like for instance, the game doesn't even allow for 70 characters so you're clearly using the 256 recruit thing, which is 100% overpowered, even the default 30 recruit cap is way too much, try going with a small squad, 10 or less(including animals), it's hard but when you get them all trained into bad ass killing machines it's very satisfying to see them obliterating squads 3 times the size, while still being in danger of getting seriously hurt.

Also you already have only 7 or 8 techs to research and only explored 25% of the map? that's literally impossible without "cheating" is some way, you either have a mod that adds way more Ai cores, ancient books etc or are importing all the time to buy a bunch of research stuff from the scraphouse.

Speeding up research time or XP gain makes the game way too easy too fast, vanilla values is the way to go.

There are many many ways to make the game more challenging, like increasing squad sizes, mods that overhaul some factions and stuff

I agree that most of this only makes it go slower, but that's the point isn't it? to have things to do for longer? besides 50-60 hours is already pretty effen good for what the game costs, many full priced games only offer a fraction of that these days(just a thought, I know you're not complaining about the game's lenght).

[angrytrex]

I don't necessarily feel the 256 mod is really cheating or cheesing it. The history of the play through does determine the level of which it makes things easier.

This run, for example, I cleared out the HN in straight up fights with 4 people - like walked them into blister hill and killed everything. I was actually just testing the game to see if it still crashed, then mid play-through they fixed 2-3 crash bugs that were dogging me. At this point I wasn't using any mods.

So after resetting the world and doing it again, and again, and doing it via assassination, there really wasn't much left to do other than trying to reproduce my last faction of 150 people and a massive base. So i went out an got 140 or so more people to sustain a massive base that's like 2-3x the size of the average city in game, and built it in the Gray desert where all that gas is.

The mods are the main thing that extends the game, so I would recommend to the OP to just go mod crazy at this point accepting the risk that things may break.

[biochimera]

The settlements are imo more to back up the meat of the game which is exploration and combat. In my current game I just had a large fight of UC tax evasion enforcers, slavers, berserkers, holy nation assault and shek allies break out in my base. That was actually one of the more entertaining fights I've had in my base for a long time. If only it was an Eyegore assault instead of tax evasion and why not some cannibals as well, would have been glorious.

But yeah the secret to longevity really is just soaking in the sights of the world and roleplaying. Going from no real rules imposed to being the "Fists of Okran" (HN start, only greenlander males in the fighting squad, tech limited to what you can get from basic science books) or "Eastern Hive" (only hivers allowed) or "Nobodies only" (everyone outside of rare recruits has to be former slaves or an equally weak recruit) to whatever sort of rules/restrictions/roleplaying you want to use. After all once you've gotten up to a certain level there's nothing in the world that can stop you.

And as for Happy's comments about base-building in Sonorous Dark, I always build a base there as a springboard to explore the Ashlands and hunt cleanser units for AI cores. If it wasn't for clipping and other stupid things during the skin harvests they'd probably be the best fun, especially if you don't rip out the CPUs of the attackers. I get why they did it but it still feels like cheating. After all if you can kill animals by ripping out teeth/meat and mechanical opponents by ripping out iron/electrical components why not just let us rip out meat/hearts of humanoids. Though if I just want an easier time the skin bandit leader is easy to abduct, and the faction collapses without him. It then means the southern hive is attacking my base but whatever, they are chumps compared to the skin bandits.

[GIJoe597]

Seems many people like the Spartacus route. Both the Kirk Douglas and the Starz version.

[Rocket Witch]

Increasing the squad size and count settings could reintroduce challenge to a playthrough.

[Wanted111who]

I'm in exact same positions and do share your concerns. I loved to have a never ending gameplay. I reach a point where i backtrack the game, load up a save, go wipe out HN, UC, TD, AS,SE and then reloaded to earlier saves before any damage is done.

Game really stale until recently when i found a mod by Neko it really spice things up for me and bring much more joy, but back to same problem, after few trips to Bast, the level keep increasing again to another level and I'm sure at one point I'll eventually reach a level where the mod can't sustain and able to walk over the entire map.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=705105311&tscn=1576597807

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1937691288

In this mod, there are many enemies in their 70~ and some 90 ~,

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1937691170

it is strange, but i do really feel the statisfaction watching my group get obliviated after an untouched run in vanilla. Problem is i can't stop my guy from leveling up.

[Keith Preston]

If you are out of ideas and pumped a good amount of hours in the game maybe just accept that nothing is ethernal and move on to another project. Yes you can stretch a games longivity by adding mods and what not ever crazy goals you set yourself like killing the whole world map with one goat or whatever but sometimes its just good to say hey i had fun i saw most and it was a pleasure but its time to move on.

[happy]

Messaggio originale di Keith Preston:

If you are out of ideas and pumped a good amount of hours in the game maybe just accept that nothing is ethernal and move on to another project. Yes you can stretch a games longivity by adding mods and what not ever crazy goals you set yourself like killing the whole world map with one goat or whatever but sometimes its just good to say hey i had fun i saw most and it was a pleasure but its time to move on.

yup.
But name the sucessor^^ kenshi is like crack, there's no turning back nor viable rehab substitutes^^

[attack turtle]

Start the game over. Dont make a settlement, or just a small one. Small team, like 1-5 members. hunt cannibals, dinosaurs, spiders. Get into hard situations - all team down, everyone tries to eat you alive, but still survive. Let slavers to enslave you. Escape. Let cannibals catch you. Escape. Hire mercenaries, cannibal hunters, lead them into trouble, let them behind and laugh out your ass. Drop all of your weapons, clothes everything, fight only with your bare hands. Do everything but build a city, because its more like a strategic game, which is not the main purpose of the game.

[Pwnicus]

This game got worlds more enjoyable when I disabled the sandbox training mods and 256 recruitment, recruit prisoners, etc, and tried a rock bottom start / cannibal hunters / whatever other difficult game start you can imagine. Try an ironman run. Disable the map if you want. Go for all the Meitou weapons, I almost always do. Heck just getting those takes you on a world tour and you'll fight some strong(er) enemies. The Reactive World mod is pretty good if you want even more people running around out there and more fleshed out factions. Crank up the population and roaming squad sliders. Set recruitment limitations and limit your faction size, or just fly solo. Basically just challenge yourself.

[MC858]

good discussion fellas

I use mods and dont really think its cheating because its a sandbox game anyway so anything goes. And some of these mods are mandatory in my oppinion. The shopping mod alone makes this game better than the grindfest the vanilla version is. Im not trying to run to 10 different towns to sell 100 copper ore because all the shop keepers each have 100caps. Thats not fun. Nothing about that is fun IMO

I mentioned earlier that i am not a 'roleplayer' , i really dont like doing that kinda stuff. Ill get into a game like everyone else, for example in Witcher 3 i really loved the world and played into it. But i am not one of those guys that has strict role playing rules (that i honestly think is comical). Im talking about ARMA 3 players who have to talk a certain way and move in a certain way. Or WOW players who talk in old english ,etc etc. I find that stuff wierd and i dont like it. I mean i understand in ARMA for example, moving together and clearing a house in a way thats efficient, but now i have to salute this guy and talk to him like god? or pretend to pull this guy over and give him a ticket because im a pretend cop? Guys that stuff is bizarre as hell to me and ill never do it lol.

I think ill give the game a break and come back to my savegame sometime in the future. Thank you all. Great game and discussion. Im sure there are many in my boat on this one

[angrytrex]

I have to agree MC858 that some of the extreme roleplay stuff seems foolish. One thing I do help that keeps me interested is to keep a history of my current faction. You don't have to roleplay, but if you keep note of historic events that are significant it does give you a bit of a direction.

At one point I retired my warriors but kept just roaming around the map with my faction leader. She was pretty powerful at this point (70's), but I wanted to see what I could get away with. I went up to Tengu's Vault and the guards took offense. So we had a little no harm no foul scrap until I got a little carried away and she got KO'd.

No big deal I suppose, get back up and go our separate ways, fix the faction and what not except one of the guards kidnapped her, enslaved her and did the gear steal / head shave thing. At this point I got a bit new purpose as I was like (might have actually said it) "oh #$%^ no that didn't just happen". So i had her break free of the cage and tear his #$%*ing heart out with one punch. Then I proceeded to basically kill every living United city NPC I could find, dragged Tengu and Eyegore to my base and functionally beheaded them. I had no intention of messing with UC before this point because they were my main trading partner.

This sort of revived the stale playthrough for a bit. No roleplaying, no fancy bits, just straight up satisfying ultra violent revenge. I hit every city they had, downloaded mods to give them more cities and wrecked them too. It was most entertaining.

Definitely get that group combat mod that was listed also. It makes the enemies less trivial in the 60's range.