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Enhanced Survival Challenged 2.63 (increased difficulty)
Description Discussions9 Comments425 Change Notes
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Gameplay, Total Overhaul
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134.529 KB
Jan 9, 2019 @ 6:49am
Nov 28, 2025 @ 9:25am
96 Change Notes ( view )
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DreadLordNaf
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Enhanced Survival Challenged 2.63 (increased difficulty)

Description
This mod aims to remove the cheese wealth mechanics that make Kenshi too easy, and make your struggling, suffering and overall challenge in Kenshi greater. If you like it leave a thumbs up.

Compatible and best played with (in the following mod load order):

Money Theft
Realistic Thieving
Longer Merc Contracts
Bounties Galore
Enhanced Survival Challenge
Reactive World
Ironman

Economy and Base Changes:
Easy cash cheese mechanics nerfed hardcore. Shops are much more discerning now and won’t pay top dollar for used and tainted gear that was obviously trashed and just looted from a corpse. Sold looted gear sells for a fraction of the price and you will risk starving for a good portion of the game and will cherish hard earned cash much more. Trade good prices nerfed, drug prices nerfed, everything with basing is harder and longer. Bounties remain the same to reward exploration and risk. Click here to see a detailed list of changes.

Combat and Creatures:
Vanilla was too easy with an army of chars, you now need to make the best of a much smaller team and have many of them multitask. Faction limit capped at 12 characters, attack slots increased to 2x, meat and leather drops reduced, maces buffed and various other balance changes. Click here to see a detailed list of changes.

Water is life now:
Water should be one of the most scarce and valuable resources in Kenshi, I've tried some changes to reflect that. Water is reduced in almost all biomes significantly, wells are more labor intensive (even electric ones), and you cannot find water for purchase at any vendors. Click here to see a detailed list of changes.

Differing resources per sector:
Biome resources now scale with difficulty. Easier biomes to live in have reduces resources while harder or specialized ones have more. See Click here to see a detailed list of changes.

Ruins Progression for Base Building
Some key base buildings and research are now locked behind needing ruins gear in order to build them to encourage ruins exploration and make end-game bases more progression based. Highly suggest NOT to set up a base right away as you will be missing key ingredients for many items until you find them in ruins. Click here to see a detailed list of changes.

Personal Statement:
I made this mod mainly for myself. I love survival games that make you struggle, suffer and feel like you just "never have enough". I find it fun being forced to make hard trade offs and tough decisions. This mod isn't for everyone but if you enjoy it, have suggestions, or find errors in it please let me know.

***
9-6-25 minor update

Reduced some non-unique bounties and tweaked some building costs.

11-28-25 bug fixes/tweaks

-Fixed some price discrepancies I missed earlier.
Popular Discussions View All (9)
5
Nov 23, 2025 @ 4:49am
Where are the Grind Machine pieces?
Dr Fumi
2
1
Nov 27, 2025 @ 12:15am
Ruins Progression for Base Building Changes
DreadLordNaf
1
Mar 25, 2024 @ 5:05pm
Water is Life Changes
DreadLordNaf
425 Comments
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DreadLordNaf  [author] Mar 5 @ 6:11am 
Yeah its supposed to be like that. You can still get really rich but its harder and requires more active going about the world or planning for base building. If you mean things like alcohol etc, if you steal those or loot them and sell them then yes you are getting a fraction of the price. If you make your own you will still get near full price.
Mobius 1 Mar 1 @ 5:24pm 
I feel like you really nerfed trading to a point where its not even feasible anymore, I get the nerf to equipment but why are we getting 1/10th of the value from trader items? how are you ever supposed to profit from that...
Redarmy Nov 28, 2025 @ 11:39am 
Awesome thanks alot. I actually just opened FCS for the 1st time ever tonight. I did learn it as i just wanted to undue your shop counter change. i do understand why you made the change to disable it, but i decided to re enable it as i dunno, i just like having a shop in my little holy nation farm. Not even sure if patrons will visit, they do visit the bughouse on HN farm in the south so fingers crossed.

From my understanding,without economy/NPC money related mods, nost NPCs have a limited amount of cats anyway and their buy lists are quite limited,so im hoping re enabling wont be too too exploititive.
DreadLordNaf  [author] Nov 28, 2025 @ 9:27am 
@Redarmy - That was a discrepancy I noticed during my last playthrough. I had fixed it along with some other small ones I noticed on my side, just forgot to do the upload. So I just did that now :) Thanks for the flag.

I hadn't modified those advanced settings much when playing. Increasing hunger combined with increasing base raids (since basing allows you to grow food to address that hunger) should provide quite a bit more challenge if you desire.
Redarmy Nov 27, 2025 @ 6:25am 
ok cheers. i noticed something possibly overlooked. The item "prearl vase" is a trade item, and a vale of around 300 buy/sell. where as the "pearl sword holder" is not a trade item, buys for 300 ish and sell value at only 37.

these items seem very similar and should be the same. id say making the pearl sword holder a trade item and giving it a similar value would be balanced. small thing but still.

also in your opinion what advanced game options should i be running with your mod? currently i have a very hardcore set up such as hunger at 0.5
DreadLordNaf  [author] Nov 22, 2025 @ 6:30pm 
@Redarmy - shop counters are disabled yes. All in my push to remove easy cheese cats methods. If you make your own alcohol you can still sell it for high trade prices. Also some random trade items you find in ruins still sell for decent.
DreadLordNaf  [author] Nov 22, 2025 @ 6:28pm 
@The Internet Janitor - Glad you like it. Basing being harder was on purpose. I hated how it pretty much allowed you get the best armor, almost best weaps, and unlimited food, all from the safety of your base once you get the tech. It seems like it building a base essentially removes a lot of exploration and fight incentives,,, so this was my attempt to address.
Redarmy Nov 18, 2025 @ 1:47am 
some wuestions: can i still buy trade goods and sell them for profit elsewhere? and did i read somewhere u disabled player shop counters? as in we cant be shopkeepers anymore?
The Internet Janitor Nov 17, 2025 @ 11:59am 
All in all excellent as long as you want to purely play a thief/adventurer surviving off scraps and luck. Which isn't terrible, honestly that is probably the best part of Kenshi. Still, cutting the max party size in half is probably the single best way to ensure players can't use piles of money or skilled crafters to equip an army and steamroll content. Even with infinite money and the ability to freely print masterwork anything you can't staff a big base or field a big army due to the party limit, so all the other kneecapping of trade and crafting feels like it only takes away from the gameplay rather than enhancing it. Especially since the ability to make a profit in the mod is already reduced regardless of how you do it, and the easiest and fastest way to get rich, simply stealing, is still 100% viable even with increased stealth difficulty mods. If anything it is even more encouraged with reduced party size and increased danger.
The Internet Janitor Nov 17, 2025 @ 6:18am 
The mod is fantastic right up until you try to build a base. Even the smallest of shantytowns is going to need power and those require limited rare items, with the requirements for crafting benches needing so many rare items it is likely they won't even spawn enough in the entire world for a single smithy, something that most major towns have several of. If you dare to move after putting down even the smallest of roots or want to build more than one outpost it gets even worse. A much better option would be to have a less efficient and/or more expensive building that does not require rare parts, and lock the "full" version behind those rare parts. Not only would that allow players to build at least a mediocre shack without full clearing the world multiple times, it would give players a reason to actually use cheaper low tech options. Another option is to tie the rare cost increases to research like the base game does instead of the building itself.