How to play Kenshi "Hardcore" To be completed.

A guide meant to introduce a new possible playstyle of Kenshi. This playstyle is meant for new players and veterans alike who would like a Kenshi experience that is more challenging and potentially rewarding. This guide is currently a work in progress as I am doing a playthrough myself using the rules stated in the guide. Please use the comment section to ask any questions or give any constructive critism. Thank you.

Announcements

To all those still reading this guide, I wrote this 2 years ago when the state of the game was very different. I'll leave it up because the general idea still works (I have made a few characters to fit this playstyle in newer versions of the game), but most of the information on the guide is very inaccurate. I appreciate that people still are reading the guide and all, and maybe I will update it eventually but right now I am not as familiar with the state of the game as I was when I first wrote this and I have a lot of updating to do. A lot of things have been added to the game that makes this type of play more viable (the toughness stat), but also more difficult (cannibals, slavers, animals). In some ways the current state of the game has made making this sort of character far more difficult, in others it has made more possibility for end game challenges to truly test your skills. Before the update that introduced animals etc. I made a character that was able to solo an entire cannibal base with 2x population activated, it was one of the most intense things I had accomplished in this game, then he got one shot by a leviathan after the update. So for those of you still interested in the Hardcore way to play Kenshi you may read this guide at your own discretion knowing that a lot of the information is no longer valid.

Introduction

Hello everyone, I'm posting this guide because I feel like there needs to be more variety in the guides for Kenshi. The purpose of this guide is to introduce a new possible playstyle of Kenshi that new players and veteran players alike will likely find challenging and more rewarding than playing Kenshi as a sand box. The only goal of this playstyle is to grow a single character into the greatest warrior to roam the land. It sounds like a simple goal but it takes a lot of time and dedication to get a single character that strong and the methods of attaining this goal as well as the experiences along the way can be very entertaining.

Table of Contents

I am making this section to help new and old readers navigate the guide as well as summarize each section and highlight any changes I make to sections as I update and edit the guide. For example later this week I plan on updating the equipment section because of the weaponsmithing update last week that changed the ways we can obtain weapons and their stats. So I would probably write *New* in front of the section title in the table of contents and under the summary I would put what is added after an *. Anyway for now I hope the layout and summaries I do for the table of contents are satisfactory.

Section 1: "The Two Rules"
The two main rules to follow for a "hardcore" solo playthrough are that you cannot recruit new characters into your squad and you cannot quicksave outside of town unless you have something unrelated to Kenshi to do. These rules are both very straight forward, if you would like to see my reasoning for these rules by all means read the full section.

Section 2: Early-Game
The early game section is meant for new players and can be skipped by veteran Kenshi players. This section teachs the reader how to level up combat stats when they have no combat experience, obtain placeholder gear to assist in early game survival and make small amounts of money off of loot. The main way to accomplish this is to lure hostile npcs to neutral npcs and fight with their help or to wander around with a neutral squad and assist them when they are attacked. Another early game strategy mentioned in this chapter is one I call "The Vulture" where you attack enemies solo after a battle when they are severely injured and then take the spoils of battle for yourself, this is obviously more risky because you do not have any neutral npcs to assist you. Use any of the strategies mentioned in this section until your character can fight most bandits in a 1 on 1 encounter and come out on top (about 15 all around for combat stats)

Section 3: Mid-Game
The purpose of the Mid-Game is to train your combat stats in preparation for the late game, obtain the best gear money can buy and learn how to engage enemies. This section is broken up into three sections due to length. These three minisections are summarized here:

Mini-section 1: Training
This section highlights the 5 main stats that need to be trained in order to succeed as a lone warrior. These stats are Strength, Dexterity, Attack, Defense and Medic. You can train Strength outside of combat by encumbering yourself with heavy equipment and items and carrying dead bodies. Medic can be trained by always using first aid on yourself after battles or alternatively healing dead or unconcious npcs. Dexterity, attack and defense are trained in combat so fight as much as possible to level these skills up.

Mini-section 2: Equipment
This sections teachs the reader how to obtain money and equipment. This section will be updated because it is out of date after the weaponsmithing patch. In order to make money, loot the corpses of dead npcs and take their weapons. Sell the weapons for profit. Also you can collect bounties from Dust Bandit Bosses and Sand Ninja Jounin by turning in their bodies to the police at police stations. They are only worth half their bounty if they die so use first aid on them to sustain their lives as you carry them across the wasteland. Use the money you acquire doing these things to buy whatever equipment pleases you. In order to obtain the best equipment it will have to be made by the player which requires many hours of research and is likely not viable until the end game.

Mini-section 3: Rules of Engagement
This section teachs the reader about when it is a good idea to engage a group of enemies and when to disengage to obtain a tactical advantage or to retreat. Before you engage a group of enemies left click them and look at their stats and medical condition on the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Use this information to gauge whether or not you have a chance to win a fight with these enemies based on their numbers as a group, combat experience and whether or not they are already injured. When fighting a group of enemies disengage when surrounded and move away until they are in a single file line, turn around and fight them in once they are it will make it difficult for multiple enemies to attack at the same time. Disengage before your leg condition gets really low so you have a chance to run away if you start getting overwhelmed by enemies. Disengage if the number of enemies is overwhelming in the first place and you won't be able to win on your own.

Section 4: End Game Challenges
This part of the guide is still a work in progress. Once complete it will have a list of many challenges and semi-impossible feats of strength for your character to attempt solo, such as attempting to raze an entire city solo. It will also be the point where you can recruit other characters and start a military training camp. I will update this guide once I come up with more ideas for challenges as well as transitions from solo gameplay to starting a squad.

The Two Main Rules

As stated in the introduction, the goal of this playstyle is to grow a single character from being the most incompetent fighter in the world to a badass lone warrior that can take on a full group of bandits, ninjas etc. without breaking a sweat. In order to attain this I recommend starting a new game as a lone wanderer and start from there. There are only two rules to follow in this playstyle.

1. You cannot recruit other characters into your squad.
You are a lone warrior and therefore you must be able to choose your battles wisely. If you recklessly charge into a fight that you cannot win, especially at the start, and are knocked unconcious and either bleed to death or get stuck in a limbo of life and death (one of your vital organs goes to negative hitpoints and is a full redbar or there's not enough black bar for you to be able to recover to 0 hitpoints so you are unconcious and never able to get up) then you have to restart or revert to a previous save point. If you have a second squadmate it removes almost any sense of suspense when you're knocked down because you can simply send them from a safe place to that character's current position and perform first aid. Also if that character does die you have a second character that's still alive. Either way you look at it having more than one character in your squad removes a lot of the suspense and challenge this playstyle is supposed to introduce.

2. You can only save in towns.
This rule is pretty self explanatory, although it's tempting to just quicksave before every battle encounter I highly recommend against it. The only exception I have for this rule is if your character is out of town and you have to leave to do something other than playing Kenshi. If you quicksave before you fight say a group of 3 sand ninjas solo and you lost that battle, you can just revert to the quicksave before you engaged them and then it's like the battle never happened, your character did not suffer any consequences of that decision and therefore cannot learn from that mistake. The goal of this playstyle is simply to become the strongest warrior, it is not to become the perfect warrior that never lost a battle. Even when your character has high stats and is able to solo a few enemies on his own there will still be times where he will be unlucky or severely outnumbered. For example when the character I am currently playing through with this playstyle was at about 30 all around for his stats he got KO'd by a lone hungry bandit because his stomach was at around 30 health and the bandit got two lucky hits before collapsing and bleeding to death only seconds after he knocked me out. My character was promptly able to get back up and do the necesary first aid upon himself afterward but the fact was he lost to a bandit that he outclassed in every way shape and form solely due to his luck which he has no control of. I easily could've reverted to a quicksave and fought the bandit again and maybe I would have hit him in the head twice for 60 damage each and kill him within the first few seconds of battle. Honestly I don't think that would've been more rewarding, in the end my character had to deal with a situation that he was not fully in control of and although he lost the battle he was the one to inflict the fatal wound. If this was a real situation and my character was an actual human being I'd like to think that he learned that those who live by the sword die by the sword because even in battles where the odds are stacked in your favor there is still always that chance you will lose your life. If I quicksaved and reverted in that situation I would've never thought of it that way and just played on without really thinking much more about it, I hope that clearly explains why the quicksave in town only rule is in place.

Basic Survival Techniques (Early Game)

At the beginning of your journey to become the greatest warrior you will start with no outstanding skill, old and rusty equipment and a small amount of money, this is all you need at the beginning though. Obviously you won't be able to fight groups of bandits on your own and because you're not supposed to recruit other characters in your squad in this playstyle you won't be able to gang up on small groups either. These are your humble beginning and with three simple strategies you can get stronger, obtain better equipment and make enough money to start your journey on your own. These strategies are common advice for beginners in the game so if you feel that you are a Kenshi veteran feel free to read the mid-game portion of the guide (I intend on writing a section a day so it will be done tomorrow). For all of these strategies I recommend using a training dummy for the first 4 or 5 levels of attack skill just to get you started.

Strategy 1: Bandit Fishing
The first strategy is fairly simple, you are bait and your job is to lure bandits into either a group of traveling soldiers, a town or a neutral outpost (there are about 5 scattered across the map). You can also lure them into a group of traveling merchants and their guards but that is very hit or miss. The way their ai appears to work is they run away if they did not provoke the attack so the only way for them to help you out is if a bandit swaps aggro to them. Anyway, once you lure the bandits into the group which will likely come to your rescue you can turn around and fight them, you won't be able to get a lot of fighting experience this way and you're putting yourself in danger but it will have to do. Once the bandits have been killed collect their weapons and sell them. If a dust bandit leader or a sand ninja is among the bodies take their equipment for yourself. Use the money you make to get first aid supplies and rinse and repeat this tactic until you have about 15 all around for your attack, defense, dexterity and strength. One might say this tactic is effective but cowardly and dishonorable and perhaps not the path to strength you would like so you may want to consider one of the other strategies.

Strategy 2: The Incompetent Bodyguard
Look for a band of traveling merchants and their guards and talk to one of the merchants, ask him for work (this is optional I like to do it for immersion purposes). Then follow the group of merchants around, it will be boring when they are in town but the adventure starts when you go on their actual trade route. When out of town just stay with the group and fight with the group when bandits attack, if you get weak stay back and perform first aid on yourself because unless your reputation is high with them (which is not plausible in the current state of the game) they will only perform first aid on eachother and leave you to rot if you fall. Make sure you loot as many of the most valuable items you can so when the merchants make it to town for a trade run they're not the only ones making a profit. If one of the merchants you were "hired" by is knocked down immediately loot them, they will have a chainmail shirt, take their backpack as well it will be useful for selling things in bulk and strength training (only equip it while looting unless you want your pathetic stats to be even more pathetic). Follow the merchants until you reach the same feats as previously stated above, until you get bored or until their ai bugs and they start running in place.

Strategy 3: The Vulture
This strategy is the riskiest of the three and depending on how you look at it the most dishonorable. This strategy can be accomplished in two different ways. You can either be lucky and come across a battle that bandits were victorius in but suffered many casualties or you can lure a group of bandits large enough to overwhelm a group of neutral roaming soldiers and watch them kill all the soldiers while suffering casualties. Sometimes you will be lucky and come across bandits in a civil war (dust bandits and hungry bandits are hostile toward eachother). The point of this strategy is to wait for the battle to end and kill any heavily injured stragglers on your own. Because you are fighting alone this will be much riskier, I recommend only fighting hungry bandits in this case because of all the hostiles you will come by they are the only enemies that are almost as pathetic as you at the start. Not all the bandits will be heavily injured so you may have to use some guerilla tactics in order to get as many kills as possible such as attacking a single wounded target while he is separated and while the rest get closer run away and come back in when you have another opportunity. This is especially easy if you are fighting enemies with crippled legs. Anyway if you are able to follow this strategy without getting yourself killed it's one of the quicker ways to get stronger and get better gear because you do all the fighting and the spoils of the battle are all yours at the end. If you happen to lure the bandits into killing a group of empire soldiers be sure to take the sergeants chainmail and weapon, the soldier's armor and the conscript's backpack (no negative effect on combat skills no other way to obtain the backpack conscripts have in the games current state).

Training Yourself, Acquiring Gear and Choosing Your Battles. (Mid Game)

Once you feel confident that your character can take on most common enemies single handedly you're ready to go off on your own. At this point other than moderate combat experience you probably have come across some mediocre equipment as well and some decent equipment if you have looted neutral npcs such as Empire Soldiers. The main focus at this point is to continue your training at much more extreme levels than before, acquiring the best equipment money can buy and learning when it is appropriate for your character as an individual to engage in battles. These three focuses will be broken into three mini-sections explaining each focus in detail. Eventually I will put these mini sections into more concise thoughts and place them in this section in less detail for people who prefer quick reading. Once you have your gear and stats high you can continue to train until you think you're ready for the end game challenges which will be written in the next section.

Mini-Section 1: Training Goals and Strategies

At this point you're a competent fighter and you can fight enemies in single combat and come out on top. Still you're not even close to your goal of being a super badass wandering swordsman that can strike down 5 enemies by looking at them. If you ever want to attain such badassery (or at least something more realistic like being able to 1-2shot enemies and kill a full group on your own) you're going to have to do some training! Your main focuses should be to train Strength, Dexterity, Attack Skill, Block Skill, First-Aid and the weapon skill of your weapon of choice. The importance of strength and dexterity is going to depend heavily on your weapon of choice. Hacker and Heavy class weapons are going to be more reliant on strength for damage output and Sabres and Katanas will rely heavily on dexterity.

Strength is the easiest combat related skill to train because you can train it outside of combat. Strength affects how much your character is encumbered by the weight of objects and how much blunt damage you inflict. In order to train strength I recommend that you encumber your character as much as possible, to do this you will need to find a backpack that can carry multiple items and to be carrying a dead body almost 24/7. I personally recommend using the medium trader backpacks at this point because they can commonly be found on dead merchants and you can carry items in stacks with them. Also stacking items is handy when you need to make money to get gear. Unequip the backpack and put it in your ordinary inventory to remove the encumbrance reduction from having the backpack equiped while still maintaining the inventory of the backpack and the full weight of the items inside. During this state of the game it's also possible to place backpacks inside of other backpacks and therefore make it possible to have infinite inventory space if managed correctly as well as a really encumbered. Personally I think exploiting that is cheap, also it's very buggy and if you're not careful you will force the game to crash, so use that trick at your own risk. A good goal to set is to be carrying 200kg worth of items at a time (including the dead/unconcious body). Once you achieve a respectable inventory weight roam the land on epic journeys still moving very slow in 4x speed, it took multiple hours for me to make a circle around the large mountain ranges that make up the center of the map, many adventures and shenanigans followed. I recommend training strength until carrying all those items and bodies no longer encumbers you. Training strength this way inhibits your ability to train athletics but you will still be training that at a respectable pace. I kind of like to think carrying around all the weight works the way weighted clothing worked in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z and once you've trained your strength and finally can get rid of all the items you were carrying around you can fight to your full potential and further kick-ass (though encumbrance does not seem to affect your attack/block speed so in reality being encumbered does not currently have an effect on how you fight).

Dexterity, Attack, Block and Weapon skills require you to be in combat to level them up so they can easily be exchanged in a relatively short paragraph compared to the behemoth I wrote for strength. Dexterity affects how much cutting damage you do and therefore is the optimal stat for cutting weapons, since all weapons have some sort of cutting damage dexterity is a good stat for all weapons. Attack skill affects how fast you attack and the damage you do with weapons all around while block skill affects how fast you block. You can train block pretty easily by having a single hungry bandit attack you while you have your character under the block only command, you can use this to make your character's block obsenely high so he doesn't get hurt when you finally get around to training attack, personally I prefer training both at the same time. Weapon skill is trained by using your weapon of choice in combat and it affects your weapon speed multiplier which seems to be factored in with your attack skill and block skill in order to get your total attack and block speed as well as how much damage you do with that particular weapon. Once you feel you have mastered one weapon it's easy to learn a new one because your attack and block skills will already be high.

Lastly you will need to train First-Aid but this will be simple because you will be using it after every fight. Simply make sure you always have a good stock of First-Aid kits and patch yourself up after every battle whether you won, ran away barely escaping with your life or were knocked unconcious woke up in a pool of your own blood watching a group of bandits laughing at how pathetic you are as they walk slowly away from you... they will learn to fear you eventually though!

Mini-Section 2: Disregard Women Acquire Fragment Axe Model MKIII and Kill Everything!

Aside from the title being a joke, this section is all about choosing what gear is best for you and how to acquire the money to obtain it. I'll go over the money portion first because that is relevant no matter what weapon and armor you choose.

If you are following my guidelines for leveling up strength you should be carrying an obscene amount of items at a given time which you can use to sell for fairly decent amounts of money depending on the quality of the items you are carrying. Also you can collect bounties by turning in dust bandit bosses and sand ninja jounin at the police station. This can be accomplished by putting them in the cage yourself or talking to the police chief, though more often than not the police chief is not at the front desk so just make your own justice and put 'em in the cage. You're going to need to make decisions about which bodies you take to the police station however because if you're following this guide you only have one man in your squad at this point and can kind of only take one at a time. You can check the bounty of a dust bandit boss or sand ninja jounin by left clicking them and checking their bounty stat in the bottom left hand corner. Also make sure they are still alive, dead bodies only pay for half their bounty. For example if you have an unconcious dust bandit boss next to dead one and the unconcious one has a bounty of 2000 cats and but other has a bounty of 3000 cats the one worth 2000 is worth more because the dead one is only worth 1500 cats. Anyway by turning bandits and ninjas in for bounties and selling large amounts of items at a given time you should be making a lot of money at this point. Keep on bounty hunting and looting bodies until you feel you have enough money for all the high quality gear you used to stare at in the store counters but were always too poor to afford.

Now that you have money you need to choose what weapon and armor is right for you. You can take the aesthetic approach or the practical approach to this, if you're lucky they are both the same for you and shouldn't have a problem to choose. By far the Fragment Axe of the Heavy Weapon class is all around the best weapon money can buy, it has high blunt damage and respectable cutting damage and a lot of reach which means you can hit a lot of enemies really hard with a single swing. Its drawbacks are pretty obvious, it's a encumbering weapon and not very quick. If you have been training your strength, attack and block skills this should not be too much of a problem and as your heavy weapons skill goes up you will become more and more deadly with this behemoth of a blade. However perhaps you would prefer a different weapon for aesthetic reasons. Personally I use an extended Katana, it has very high cutting damage and is very easy to wield effectively. Its drawbacks are its reach and lack of blunt damage but I feel it more than makes up for it with its quick attacks that can easily take down 3 people at once if you get lucky and only hit vital organs. Sabres have high cutting damage mixed with some blunt damage and have good reach and respectable speeds. The same can be said about Hacker class weapons however they have higher blunt damage. At the end of the day choosing a weapon is entirely up to whether you want what is arguably the best weapon in the game's current state or if you want something that you personally like for aesthetic reasons and can also appreciate the personal strengths and drawbacks of the weapon. Either way once you choose your weapon buy the MKIII version, right now that is the best quality you can get, whether or not that will change when weapon crafting comes out will likely be found out soon according to the official website.

Choosing your armor is much more black and white than choosing a weapon. Every weapon type has a personal strength so choosing which weapon is best for you is a matter of choosing which is most aesthetically pleasing while most effective for your playstyle. Armor however you either choose whether you are wearing clothing or body armor and that is almost completely dependent on whether either option is more aesthetically pleasing than the other. Personally I like to wear the clothing of United City Police Sergeants because I think it looks cool, however I could easily replace the armless jacket with medium plate armor and take significantly less damage when I fight. I also think medium armor looks pretty cool in sort of the post apocalyptic theme that the game has going on right now with its endless desert wasteland, but like I said it completely depends on what you feel like wearing at the end of the day. Some well padded pants, armored flip-flops, a sturdy straw hat and a chainmail shirt typically provide most of the protection you need anyway so really, just choose what you think looks best. Also on a side note, whether or not you want to carry a backpack around is up to you, personally I carry the kind that empire conscripts have because they offer extra inventory space without inhibitting your ability to fight, as far as I can tell the only way to obtain one of these backpacks is off the body of an empire conscript.

Mini-Section 3: Do You Know Your Enemy?

By this point you have an extreme training regiment that requires you to do laps around the map in heavy gear and some awesome personal equipment. If not either way now's a good time to learn when to engage enemies and how to gauge whether or not that's a good idea. At this point you have been fighting enemies with stronger fighters by your side, now it is time to ween off of depending upon neutral npcs to win your battle and to win battles with you own skill, wit and grit. First thing you should know if you do not know this already, if you left click any type of npc you can look at their basic stats as well as their medical condition. This is really helpful in many ways, knowing how high an enemy's attack and defense skill is a good way to gauge whether you are ready to fight them and or how many of that particular enemy you might be able to fight at the same time. Also knowing that your enemy is close to bleeding to death is helpful so you know when it's alright to disengage and focus on a different target.

One thing you should know about all hostile npcs is that their blood does not seem to coagulate as quickly as your character and most neutral npcs. Also they do not follow the same requirements for death, I once knocked out a dust bandit boss, performed first aid on him, all his stats were positive but because he was on the ground long enough he was still dead. Because of this Bandits and Ninja can die from insignificant wounds because they do not carry first aid kits and can therefore die slow painful deaths because they just don't stop bleeding. On the other hand once you've been in your fair share of fights and have good equipment your blood level will almost always be the least of your worries because it will take multiple hits for you to start losing blood faster than you're regenerating it and even when your blood loss is high it slows down at a much faster rate. You can use this to your advantage, although your enemies can gang up on your and beat you down you are almost guaranteed to be able to get back up as long as you perform first aid on yourself while they will bleed to death if you manage to hit them enough times.

Also once you start lefting clicking enemies you will start seeing the hierarchy of enemies according to combat stats. To summarize it, Hungry Bandits<Hungry Bandit Bosses<Dust Bandits<Dust Bandit Bosses<Sand Ninja<Sand Ninja Jounin. A small group of Hungry Bandits (3-4) without a leader should be provide a moderate challenge and low danger when engaging enemies alone for the first time. As you get stronger you will begin to see noticable improvements of how your character deals with groups of enemies, at first it will be hard because it will be the first time fighting on your own without the odds stacked for you but you will learn quickly because this game rewards you for getting your ass kicked and living to tell the tale.

Now that you know these things you can effectively decide whether or not it's a good idea to engage a group of enemies. First compare your own stats to theirs, then check and see whether or not they are wounded/whether or not your wounds will cripple you too much for the fight to be worth it. Then look at how many enemies are in the group, 2-3 of any enemy is very easy to face while adding a forth enemy can be overwhelming at the beginning. Try to avoid fighting large groups of enemies and enemies with better stats or medical condition than you. Like I said earlier in the guide once my character in full gear with very high stats fought a lone hungry bandit, the weakest enemy in the game as seen in the hierarchy, and was knocked out because his stomach was in crappy condition and he got hit there twice due to sheer luck. The bandit died because as I said earlier they just don't stop bleeding for whatever reason and I got up and was able to heal myself at the end but still the medical condition you have before going into a battle in comparison to the enemy's is something not to joke about.

Sometimes you won't be able to avoid these fights and you will have to make a decision of whether to fight til you get knocked down or disengage and run for help. Because of this it is helpful to know when to disengage. When you are outnumbered and or outclassed and feel like you won't survive if you continue to fight, then run look for a group of neutral npcs or a town you can take refuge in, your life is worth more than your honor right now. Sometimes you might need to disengage so that you can reengage for a tactical advantage. Let's say you are fighting 5 enemies but can't really get a hit off because you are too busy blocking their attacks. Well, if 3 of those enemies have a crippled leg and therefore are moving slower, simply run away and turn around once you are at a safe distance to engage the two non crippled enemies and then move on to the crippled ones. You should also disengage when you are in the middle of a group of enemies and they are all targetting you. Run out of the dog pile and force the enemies to fight in single filed lines. Not only does this get you out of a sticky situation, only one enemy will be able to hit you at a time because the rest will need to position themself where they will have a good opportunity to hit you and you can potentially hit enemies behind the enemy directly in front of you. Lastly as mentioned before, disengage on individual enemies that are about to die, you can finish them off if you'd like but switching focus to an enemy that is still in good health that also has a higher chance of killing you because he has a higher life expectancy.

All in all using all of this information and these techniques should facilitate fighting enemies alone and eventually lead you down the path of the badass warrior you strive to be.

The One Man Army (End Game Challenges)

When I first had the idea of the guide I planned on writing a section a day but after writing and editing the guide by myself for a while it doesn't seem as realistic. I check the guide daily for any questions and constructive criticism that may come up in the comments. I also don't feel I have all my ideas for an "End Game" section complete. Just to give you guys the gyst of this portion I plan to make it a set of challenges to attempt to accomplish once you feel you're strong enough to proceed to the "end game", as the title suggests. This will include things like razing an entire town single handedly, starting a military society as an all mighty tyrant or being the protector of those who are too weak to defend themselves and just in general being a paragon of all that is good and fighting for some sort of noble and righteous cause. All in all I will try to add stuff as I go to this section, I have decided to get rid of the Future Challenges section because this section can also serve that function. If anyone has any ideas for challenges to add to this portion of the guide by all means feel free to let me know, I might even make you a contributor if I feel you have a lot to add to the guide.

[Doug]

Currently, one of the best challengers I've found so far is the bug master; his stats are ihgher than almost any other npc so far that I've found, and even with a skeleton in masterwork/specialist grade armor and an edge type-3 sabre, i can not touch him yet.

[Twiichii]

...cont...

For an "End Game Challenge" suggestion, I think it would be great to see if your badass can take down an entire nest of dogs or beak things on their own. It would prove their worth. A leviathan hunt would be cool, too, but that would likely come before nest clearing.

Love your challenge/guide a ton, I've already started a new character to do it. Keep it up, I look forward to this being expanded. ;)

PS: Sorry to make this so long, but it wouldn't fit into one comment!

[Twiichii]

...cont...

Another suggestion is for the other skills that you have ignored, the more "passive" ones. Theivery, Weapon/Armor Manufacturing, Sneak, etc. These can all be extremely beneficial, and at the "end game" state, you might as well level them up. Weapon Manufacturing (and eventually Armor as well) will allow your character to attain higher quality gear, such as the Edgewalker-grade Frag Axe (and eventually higher grade armors as well) to bash a bandit's face in with much ease. Theivery will let you escape cages in the event you are captured by cannibals or shakled by slavers. It also helps with the shopkeepers when they lock you in or out of their shops due to the current state of AI.

...cont...

[Twiichii]

This guide is really nice and super comprehensive, but the combat section could do with a bit more of tactics giving, seeing as you are noly one versus many. Namely the fact that you want to only fight on the normal (slowest) speed setting.

For example, when you mention luring the enemies out into a single file line, you could add that you should go for the ones with the higher run speed first, as they are the biggest threat. Since the slow guys/cripples have to take long to get to you, they won't be able to engage you as soon as their faster compatriots. Also, if those jerks try and run infront of you to get a hit on you as you pass, it is a good idea to maneuver your way around them, or in the completely opposite direction. This will be a great help to not getting sturck down when you've got a low run speed, you are carrying bounties, or training strength.

...cont...

[Panther]

nice, work I like.

[Elonmusk]

great idea. I have a end game challange. wipe out every man on the map as claim yourself as "THE SUPREME POPULATOR"

[Althran]

i like this guide and ill share it with on of my friends.

[Paco the Fist Taco]

Personally I like the feeling of starting off as a lone wanderer with very bad stats and knowing that there is no way I will be able to fight on my own without getting my ass kicked and that I will either have to work with those around me until I am strong enough to set off on my own or use dishonorable means such as fighting an enemy that is already bleeding to death or crippled to gain combat experience. So I don't mind starting by grinding enemies with the help of guards. However as I said, if this is something that bores you and you would prefer to skip this portion then go ahead, just because in my eyes the actual solo fighting portion of the playthrough is a goal in itself doesn't mean it has to be for you. Anyway I appreciate your input and hope my reasoning makes sense.

[Paco the Fist Taco]

Yes you can edit your faction affection and stats and if that's what you want to do in that situation by all means. You can use first aid kits on members or neutral or ally factions but if they move it makes it very difficult so that's probably why it hasn't worked for you. Yes at the beginning you are not solo fighting, unless you are using the "Vulture" strategy I suggested where you only attack wounded targets. However being the greatest warrior and solo fighter is the goal of this playthrough. If you start out being able to fight on your own it's not really much of a goal as much as it is a given. With that said you can still do choose that start or edit your stats in a way that you start off strong enough to fight on your own and just work towards training to be strong enough to consider yourself a one man army.

[Berserk]

You can easily edit your faction affection to suit that preference, though I didn't know they would use their medkit on you. If I try to use my medkit on other factions it doesn't work, but that's probably because they won't hold still. I just assumed it would work the same for them. But my point was that, at the beginning, you're bandit baiting instead of solo fighting. So if you want to solo, use Retired Soldier =p Or at least give yourself 15 Strength and 10 combat skill so you can take on some bandits yourself with the Holy Sword start. I just think bandit baiting isn't exactly soloing.