The Ultimate Kenshi Character Creation Guide

This is a step by step guide for the creation of the ultimate death machine in the Kenshi world

Prologue or A Few Words About The Guide

This guide has been inspired by a comment in a very long thread here in Steam Discussions back in the early access days of Kenshi. The commenter made the claim that every time he would get a new addition to his rooster, would send them to the mines to "toughen up". So I thought to give it a try with the “I'm not locked in with you, you are locked in with me” attitude. This guide is the result.

The guide requires some familiarity with Kenshi gameplay, but I’ ll try to keep the steps simple for the new players. So to make your life easier go to options/controls and add keyboard shortcuts for at least toggle sneak mode, medic order and toggle hold mode (G, V and H for me).

Also the guide uses the “The Slaves” start which means the characters will be malnourished in the creation window. So it would be a good idea to have already created and exported the body of your choosing in a different start, to be used directly as import in this one. If not don't sweat, there are multiple surgeons stationed in Thieves Guilds around the world where you can change your appearance as long as you are a member.

You spawn at Rebirth, a place of pain and suffering, you are a party of two and you are both slaves. As the game suggests your best option is to jump to the nearest cage and that’s exactly what you should do. Pause, check your surroundings and run to the closest cage. In the lower right of your UI, where the active jobs are, you ‘ll notice an obedient slave active job. As long as this job is active and you don’t give at the game any input you ‘ll run around doing jobs and the guards will let you be. If you try to control your chars in any way, the job “obedient slave” will stop and the guards will attack you on sight, turning you into mincemeat. The job can be reactivated by entering a cage.

Setting The General Idea or Rebirth, A World Of Exploits

The guide exploits some very basic game mechanics or their lack of

i) The day and night cycle
The guards go to sleep but you don’t have to. The day starts at 6:00 and ends at 22:00, during that time you ‘re an obedient slave. The guards need about 1.5 - 2 hours to return to their beds from remote posts and they get off their beds around 5:00. This means you have from midnight to 4:00, 4 whole hours to snoop around with relative safety.

ii) Guards will bound you with shackles
If you don’t wear any. Sounds quite normal, until rephrased as Guards Have Unlimited Access To Prisoner Shackles. Yes, if the guards spot you in the cage without shackles, even if your own are in your inventory, they will provide you with new ones. Each one weighs 20 kg and you have enough space to carry 10 of them. Note that I said 10, while including the ones on your feet should be 11. Considering that shackles provide a -20% bonus to stealth and athletics, you need to have enough space in your inventory to remove the ones from your feet every time you step out of the cage.

iii) The Storm Houses are actually shops
The Rebirth buildings, towers excluded, are shops. This means two things. One, only one of the occupants of the House is a guard, the other is a shopkeeper. He has different inventory and if the guard dies, he will never bother to escort the prisoners to the morning routine. Two, all the junk that lies around in the House (what you see highlighted when pressing ALT) will respawn after a 24 hour period if someone, let’s say, bothered to pick them up and store them (the counter is the best place to do so). The list of items that will repopulate the store includes all kinds of food, with their price as indicator of their chance to appear. More expensive the item, the smaller their chance to spawn.

iv) There is no get in the cage animation
Which means you don’t need to be near the cage to hop in. Actually if you are in pause mode and press the get in order (right click on the cage) in a nearby cage you will teleport inside (TP to the cell from now on). This seems to work extremely well if you are standing next to guard beds with the nearest cage.

Step One or Move Like A Butterfly

By now the veteran players of Kenshi have understood everything they need to know about the guide, but for the rest let’s explain things a little

Juggling two Characters
As already said you spawn at Rebirth, you hop in a cage and you are an obedient slave. Press F4 and stare at the screen until 22:00.This is your day routine and you will repeat it everyday from now on. The actual guide is for the night where you wait for both of chars to be in the cage (no need to follow them, just observe the change in their portraits), select both of them (tilt key) and sneak (G), select the first (1) right click on the portrait unlock shackles and the same for the other one (2, right click, unlock shackles). Even if found (your portrait will turn blank as the guard picks you up and puts you back in the cell) you are totally fine as long as you are in the cage. Just reset the sneak and start all over again. And pretty much that’s it for the first day.
If you managed to unlock the shackles, continue with the cage lock, hop out and back in and repeat the process. Your goal being to raise lockpicking so unlocking the cage has above 70% chance. NO SNEAKING ALLOWED DURING THE DAY ROUTINE, it will remove the slave job. When the time goes near 5:00, you stand in your cage, shackles on your feet and wait for the night to arrive. It would be a good idea at this point to raise your encumbrance a bit. Just put your shackles to your inventory and the guards will provide you with new ones. Two extra shackles is more than enough for now, since high levels of encumbrance increase your hunger and you don’t have reliable access to food yet.

One with the shadows
The next stage after you can unlock your cage without spending the whole night trying, is to raise sneaking. Finally both your chars can finally meet in the closest house. Move around clearing the junk and throw it in the counter. If the guards wake up go in hold mode, TP to the cell, put your shackles back and retry. If you have time and feel confident you can try KO the guards while they sleep. You will fail of course but since you can TP back to the cell instantly, keep trying. If you get hit no sweat, don’t fight back, just jump to the cage. Your goal is to unlock the ninja run (stealth 30). Now you talk business.

That’s a lot of food
At this point you can separate the Shops into two groups, the five left and the five right of the tower. Your goal being to clear the junk of each group every night in turns. One night the left group and the next the other. All junk, even in the upper floor. Knock the guards out, clear the place, move to the next house.Don’t forget to remove the guards weapons as well and put them in the nearby storage. Now you can also increase the amount of shackles in your inventory to 10. Select a house as the base of operations. The two Shops right of the tower are good candidates. There both of you will meet at the beginning of each night, unload your shackles in a storage chest (the extra weight hurts your stealth stat), do your night routine, unload the extra food in the second chest at the end of the night (including valuable items you stole from the shopkeepers and first aid kits), load back your shackles and jump to a cage for the day routine.

Step Two or Sting Like A Bee

In step one you trained your strength, stealth, thievery, assassination, athletics and labour. Now it’s time to raise your combat skills a bit

Humble beginnings
Your day and night routine remains the same as before, but now considering you have extra time in your hands you ‘ll train martial arts. Make sure you have first aid kits and splint kits, pick a house in the group you just cleared and KO the guards in the nearby shops. Then enter the house KO one of the guards (I assume you already cleared the guards of the burden of their weapons, but you let them keep their armour), keep one char in stealth and the other walking around until the other guard wakes. Try to choose a relatively clear space as the place of engagement (near the door is good enough) and attack with both chars. If the fight gets near the walls or the chests, just pull your chars back and wait for the guard to follow. You ‘ll break your arms and legs hitting the heavy armoured guard in your first attempt, so don’t allow the damage to turn to negative. Take a lot of damage, return some, jump in the cages, apply first aid, wait for the guard to sleep or move away, return to your base and repeat the process the next night.

Don’t get cocky
As your martial arts and dodge stats increase, with combination with toughness (strength and toughness are responsible for the amount of damage you do), you will be able to take out a guard without major injuries. At that point you may feel the itch to attack two guards at once. DON’T. Just repeat the process in another house. Remember to KO the guards of the adjusted shops first, because the first thing a guard does is not to attack, but raise the alarm. And soon you are ganked by six guards, which their attacks are queued one after the other and don’t reset if you TP into the cell. To cut the story short, you ‘ll be in the cell and you ‘ll see your limbs flying around and you don’t want to see that. Your goal is to unlock Jump Kick (martial arts 30).

Mayhem
Now you can start the 2 vs 2 fights. You still KO the next door guards first. You also heal the guards after. Note that if the guards die there will be none to escort you to do your morning routine, no morning routine, no strength-athletics training. So keep your training dummies in top shape. No attacks to the same people 2 nights in the row. No KO guards, removing their armour, putting them in prisoner uniforms and shackles, into cages and then watch them complaining for eternity about your crimes as they break stones. It may be funny but breaks the guide and you don’t want that either. Your goal is to unlock the Jumping Knee (martial arts 55). A devastating attack.
As you try to reach your goal, pay a visit to every tower, KO the guards and remove their weapons. There are weapon storages in every first floor, so you can dispose them conveniently. Your stealth is high enough by now, to also KO the guards at the gates and take their weapons and store them in the shop chests. As you get closer to your goal, will be harder and harder to not kill the guards, so no more visits for martial arts training to the shops and the gate guards will be your training dummies from now on. Also by now the strength training gives very small returns, so you need to set a goal on where to stop your day training. For me is at 70 but you are free to set your own limit.
What’s next is easy to imagine as you can easily wipe out the entire mines, so the guide stops here.

Epimythion or The Start Of Something Amazing

At this point I assume you beat everyone and you are free to go from the mines. You have high strength, dexterity and toughness. You have maxed thievery skills and labouring, decent medic stats and you can outrun every opponent. No that you need to ofcourse. If you are not a fan of martial arts, you can start using from now on your weapon of choice. And with that high attributes will be a piece of cake. Cats will not be a problem also. You can visit eny Holy Nation major city and empty the stores of their goods. You can even Naruto run all the way to bug master and knock him out in a single hit. But all this are for the future. What to do next?
My recomentation: equip the bags you found on the upper levels of the towers, fill your inventory with the best food you gathered all this time, take the skeleton repair kits and few advanced first aid kits (I hope you used the general storage chest as the place you stored your valuables since items can be combined there) and head north. There is a small shack where the flotsam ninja put some clothes, food and weapons for the people that escape the mines. Which means you.
I suggest to follow the road north and spend some time in flotsam village until your hair grows back amd maybe train your weapon of choice on the little cannibals, but first you need one more thing to train. When the road meets the river, turn right, jump in the water and follow the river. Press f4 and and just continue swimming until, well you 'll understand when to stop. Talk to the guy, look at his stuff and leave the same way.
Have fun!!

[Morzhûl]

Thanks for the guide!
Didn't knew about the iten respawn.
Got something new to try now.