Comprehensive Base Location Directory

This is a complete list of potential base locations for every single zone in the game, in order to give prospective settlers the inspiration and information they need to choose where to start building.

0) DISCLAIMER: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Before we go anywhere, I would like to make it known, I will do everything in my power to prevent spoilers leaking into this guide, but this IS a complete list of every location in the game, so if you have not explored the world of Kenshi on your own extensively, you may be spoiled on some location names and their biome types

As such, this guide is intended for seasoned Kenshi players. For everyone else, you are free to peruse of course, but consider this notice to be my disclaimer.

For the sake of those who will ignore this warning (and I won't blame you if you do), I will not be showing excessive glamour or landscape screenshots. I do have to show you what the place looks like, though.

Anyway, moving right along.

1-0) Introduction

I began compiling this guide because I was frustrated with how esoteric base-building locations are. There are countless threads here on the Steam forums, as well as on Reddit and elsewhere all dedicated to people asking "where do I build though" and other similar questions. For the sake of the community I decided to put this together.

It is necessary to group zones together in some way because there are simply too many and I didn't want the sidebar to grow longer than it already is. So, I decided ultimately to catalogue alphabetically ('the' isn't counted similar to Valve's method of alphabetizing for games in the Steam Library). For example, below you will be able to find The Crags under C, and The Swamp under S.

Out of necessity, some have been broken into chunks, or even multiple parts, because I keep hitting the character limit.

For the sake of brevity and not listing simply every single flat space in the game where you can place a building, I instituted several prerequisites for inclusion in this guide:

• Firstly, the area must have access to Water, Stone, Iron & Copper.

• Secondly, fertility is optional, but locations with none will be marked as skeletons/hydroponics only.

• Thirdly, even if lacking resources, strategically or aesthetically significant areas may be included.

• Fourthly, the area must not overly tax your computer, or take too long to load when simply navigating with the camera or your characters before you start building.

Most of these might seem obvious, but as for number four, I only institute this rule because, if you have ever built a really large base yourself, with a lot of characters and a lot of buildings and all the rest, you will probably know already that on its own a large enough base WILL damage your framerate and require incrementally more and more time to load, the more stuff you build.

I have a pretty beastly computer myself and even with the game on low settings with the Compressed Textures Project mod, I still have to spend like 20-30 waiting for the game to load, before walking for 5 seconds, and then going back to loading again while traveling through The Swamp.

For this reason, areas like The Swamp and Burning Forest are almost beyond consideration in this guide, though I ended up surveying them anyway.

So in short, if it isn't a place where you can set up a self-sufficient long-term base, it must be a location that is at least very defensible, or simply interesting.

I will endeavor to include three different images for each location, one for indicating the location on the map itself, one for the 'prospect' readout, and one screenshot of the location itself, including spaces for location of mines since those are usually the most fixed parts of any build.

1-1) Contributing

Additionally, if YOU yourself have any recommendations for base locations, feel free to indicate them to me in the comments or otherwise, you can use references such as Nice Map's grid references to provide accurate information:

Nice Map [Grid + Zones] 

A Workshop Item for Kenshi

By: Djeeshka

It includes some colour adjustments, grid and zone outlines. There are more variations of Nice Map that might fit your taste. Check these out at Hope you like it. Feedback is welcome. Have a nice time playing Kenshi!

You don't even need to download it, there's a nice preview in the screenshots of the link above. And in that preview, you can clearly see X is the rows and Y is the columns. X17 Y21 is the rough location of Flats Lagoon for instance.

If it fulfills my prerequisites for inclusion in the guide, I'll gladly add it and attribute its discovery to you.

1-2) On The Subject of Mods

This guide is for vanilla Kenshi only. If you utilize mods that alter the resources scattered across the world, you'll obviously get very different results to what is contained herein - but hey, maybe you'll still find value in the locations themselves.

For the sake of full disclosure, I myself am using several mods, but the only two that change the resources found in the world in any way are:

Windy World's End 

A Workshop Item for Kenshi

By: Faust

Want to set up in World's End and launch incursions into Cannonball Plains from the safety of the city? Built your research bench only to realize you can't leech off the city's grid? Well not anymore!

Winds for Stormy Deadlands 

A Workshop Item for Kenshi

By: nidaren

Tiny Tweaks: Winds for Stormy Deadlands Threre is a permanent Acid Storm going on in the Deadlands area, however there are absolutely no winds there in the unmodded game.

... and are fairly minimal in terms of their impact. I'm also using:

Copper Ore Drills 

A Workshop Item for Kenshi

By: Erei

Did it never bothered you that you could unlock iron drills, but apparently you had to keep mining copper with a pickaxe forever ? Not anymore ! Add the copper drill (1-2-3) to the game.

... which does actually change resource availability a bit once you unlock it since a single copper node can be all you ever need, as opposed to needing to manually mine it like in vanilla and potentially not keeping up with demand.

I will add an optional section in brief at the end of this guide for modding recommendations, in order to help you open up some of the more desolate locations for ease of use.

1-3) Map Overview of All Locations

Here you can see an overview of all the locations presently contained within this guide.

While I was actually putting together the guide I needed some way to log all of the different locations I had checked and so on, which led me to create... this monstrosity. It's not super pretty or perfect, but it got the job done. You may not need this to find the individual locations, but it might help pinpoint them.

Obviously, none of them are numbered, but I'm not doing that. I'm not only not doing that, you should be able to figure out just by process of elimination which is which, if you're really confused.

Anyway, I hope this map is... interesting, or useful, or both. Also, once again, thanks to Djeeska for making Nice Map.

Map Legend:

• Blue Circle - Base location (specific details provided below)
  
• Red X - No location worthy of base construction
  
• Yellow Square - Only self-sufficient with the help of mods
  
• Green Square - Grid reference contains at least one noteworthy base location

2-A) Arach, Arm of Okran, Ashlands

Arach

WARNING: I feel I probably don't have to mention it since if you even approach this location, there's numerous warning signs, but look out! Arach is a VERY dangerous mid to lategame zone, and the consequences for being knocked out here are usually fatal.

1)

Description: This location is ideal for saying you base in Arach, when you've still got one toe in Watcher's Rim. Most of this spot is technically Arach though, so I filed it under Arach. Anyway, it's some of the flattest terrain I found, enough that you could kinda build a little base here. Unfortunately the resources suck and no water. You might not need Deep Drills, even, but you will need Moisture Farming and hydroponics.

Resources: ~90% iron, ~90% copper, 40-50% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Skin spiders.

Arm of Okran
1)

Description: A cute little flat plateau of sorts on which you can build your own Flotsam village if you like. There's one cliff here on the left you could build a watchtower, though you may also need to build a wall or structure to block enemies coming from that hidden passage back there.

You may need like a bunch of copper ore drills to make up for only 15-20% copper here, however you can put iron ore on the slanted hillside to keep it out of the way, and at the back, out of the way, you can get 80-90% stone. Only 10% water unfortunately, on the plateau, but in the basin to the south you can ~50% water, enabling you to supply your hydroponics, since nothing's growing here for some reason.

Technically Arm of Okran, but it has trees and is right on the edge of the Hidden Forest zone.

Resources: 100% iron, 15-20% copper, 80-90% stone, 10-50% water, hydroponics only

Dangers: Cannibals, bonedogs?

2)

Description: A truly spectacular location. You're right on top of the spine of the Arm of Okran, and you have access to all the resources you could possibly need! Well, mostly, water is low and there's no fertility so hydroponics only! Still, you have plenty of room to build, and your base is going to be VERY LONG, so long that you may have trouble getting all of your base to register as one outpost.

You'll need like a few extra wells to keep water moving through your outpost, but hey, unique location, EXTREMELY easy defense, enemies are forced to march up and funnel in to your gates, and if all else fails, you can probably just run to World's End which is nearby and take shelter there!

Resources: 100% iron, 15-20% copper, 70% stone, 10% water, no fertility

Dangers: This spot may attract attention from cannibal raids, prayer day, united cities taxation, and possibly dust bandit raids.

Ashlands

1)

Description: I didn't even bother posting a warning for the Ashlands, if you made it here you already know this zone is dangerous.

Anyway, I expected to find more cool locations in Ashlands, but not really. This spot works for me though. It's right on the edge of a cliff so you get a nice view into nothingness, a bit of room to build back along the cliff, and you're only impeded very slightly by a no-build zone from a nearby ruin. No big deal.

Nothing here so grab Deep Drill Mining and Moisture Farming Enhanced and hydroponics researched too.

Resources: 0% everything.

Dangers: Danger Will Robinson! Danger!

2)

Description: Buildings in image only for a sense of scale. There's no ore to be had here.

Anyway, I figure it's worth pointing out this place since it's right near the entrance to the zone, but it's not too close to either of the nearby sniper towers, but it might be close enough to keep those areas loaded in order to trouble enemies that try to raid you, and you're right next to the acid river.

You'll want Deep Drill Mining and Moisture Farming Enhanced and hydroponics researched too.

Resources: 0% everything

Dangers: Danger Will Robinson! Danger!

2-B) Bast, Berserker Country

Bast
1)

Description: It's not too bad. You've got some trees, you're on kind of a plateau, it's sorta nice. You can segregate all your ugly drills into one corner, except for stone which you kinda have to have off to the other side of your base. Still, it's out of the way.

Watch out about building south, there's a no-build zone that'll eat some of your buildable space, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Resources: 75-90% iron, ~80% copper, 60-80% stone, 60% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: You should be getting visits from both the UC and the Holy Nation for prayer day, as well as cannibal raids! Rebel farmers might stumble on your town sometimes too.

Berserker Country
1)

Description: The only space in this zone worth your time in my opinion. It doesn't look like much, but it's a delightful little spot that is well suited for a truly evil faction. If you are aiming to play Kenshi while making heavy use of 'certain furniture' you may or may not come across within the game, and also by basically making an enemy of every faction you meet, well, this is the place to base. It looks like hell itself, as if the ground is drenched in gore.

One caveat is there are NO resources here. You need mods. You will need Deep Drill Mining, Moisture Farming Enhanced, and if that wasn't enough, mandatory hydroponics.

Great spot if you plan to roleplay as some sort of demon king, or cruel, savage lord.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Berserkers? Roaming cannibals? Cannibal raids too?

2-B) Bonefields

Bonefields
1)

Description: While the Bonefields is generally a disappointing zone in terms of resources and terrain aesthetics, this spot seemed well worth settling. There's one singular copper node nearby, but that's really all you need.

You've got quite a striking view of the nearby mountains of Royal Valley, which is kind of beautiful in that stark Kenshi way. There's also a bridge to Fishman Isle nearby, I don't even know how much use it sees but hey, gating it off at both ends and maintaining some kinda guard duty might be fun.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 70% water, 97% fertility

Dangers: Beak things, bonedogs, boneyard wolves, gorrillo bandits, band of bones, possibly gurglers and crabs.

2)

Description: This cliff area is kind of big and you have some extra space behind the camera, but this is probably the best section right here. I'm not even sure what you'd really wanna do with it, but I have to put it here because it's just kind of great. Might make for a nice monk commune or some such... maybe a monastery. You don't need to limit it to martial arts, you can also train your monks with polearms, staves and naginata for female warriors.[en.wikipedia.org] Just a suggestion!

You will probably want Deep Drill Mining so you can actually get iron, copper, stone up here. You also might want Moisture Farming Enhanced, and hydroponics is necessary too, since no fertility.

Resources: 0-100% iron, 0% copper, 0-30% stone, 10% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Beak things, bonedogs, boneyard wolves, gorrillo bandits, band of bones, possibly gurglers and crabs. Maybe Southern Hive too?

3)

Description: Basically just a variation on Bonefields #2, this location is a little more expansive, but has a few more ways for enemies to get up to your cliff base! Suggested then, is to wall off all but one of the entrances so you only have to worry about one chokepoint. Not much else to say, this spot I think also has more resources, but you're still going to need Moisture Farming Enhanced, and you probably also want Deep Drill Mining just so you can shore up your mineral gains.

Resources: 100% iron, 0% copper, 30% stone, 10% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Beak things, bonedogs, boneyard wolves, gorrillo bandits, band of bones, possibly gurglers and crabs. Definitely Southern Hive.

4)

Description: Worth mentioning because the resources are actually good, unlike the majority of Bonefields. Also, interestingly while this zone obviously only has 100% arid, if you step up the hill to the east even slightly, you get 100% green from Royal Valley biome, so you can grow green and arid crops very efficiently here!

The amount of space you have for building is fair, and you have the option to build vertically up the hill, or horizontally along the coastline. Not a bad spot!

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 70% water, 87-97% fertility

Dangers: Beak things, bonedogs, boneyard wolves, gorrillo bandits, band of bones, possibly gurglers and crabs. Definitely Southern Hive. Maybe gurglers? Maybe iron spiders wandering in from Cheaters Run.

2-B) Border Zone

Border Zone
1)

Description: I like this little T-shaped intersection. You can build all your stuff in here. Maybe only build one public-facing gate. I would probably wall off the north and west, gate off the south, and maybe airlock it too, but you may or may not have the room to do that since this area is a bit cramped.

Still, you got all your resources, some flat terrain, and it's an interesting enough spot.

Resources: 100% iron, 80% copper, ~60% stone, 60% water, 90-100% fertility

Dangers: Dust bandit raids, black dragon ninja raids? I dunno? Starving bandits?

2)

Description: A neat, cramped little canyon. One of the few such locations I've found that actually is sealed off properly, except for the entrance. No need to worry about enemies descending the cliffs behind you! None of it is pathable. This also means, in a pinch, with the Holy Nation beating down your gates, you have absolutely no choice but to stand firm and try not to die.

The only trouble is, there is VERY little space to build here. In the above screenshot you'll see I have at the very end four iron drills, two copper drills, and near the front I have a stone drill, and it all required very specific placement. I've also placed a few structures just for scale, and to give you some idea of how you'll have to place yours to fit everything in.

You may want the Slopeless mod in order to help you build on weird, uneven terrain.

Resources: 90-100% iron, ~50% copper, 70% stone, 60% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Dust bandits, starving bandits, prayer day, cannibal raids, and you might just get Shek taxation patrol.

3)

Description: I was really impressed by the terrain here. Not only can you sort of get at the resources you need here, this immensely vertical mountaintop which is actually pathable and you can build on it, also is a fairly enclosed space that only has a couple of pathways into it!

If you're looking for a cliff or mountaintop base with a LOT of verticality this might be the place for you. You will probably badly want Slopeless mod to make it work, but an example of something you could do is, combine that with Forgotten Buildings mod to get access to the giant outpost citadels you see some factions use as their HQ, and then put one at the very top of the mountain. Then you'll have a sweet, heavily fortified three-story space to use as you please!

Even without mods, you still have plenty of room down below to fit buildings as needed, you have fertility AND water, I would STRONGLY recommend looking at this place if you are into hilly/mountainous terrain and locations with strong defensive capabilities.

Resources: 60-70-80% iron, ~70% copper, 70-100% stone, 10-50% water, 75-94% fertility

Dangers: Dust bandits, starving bandits, prayer day, cannibal raids, and you might just get Shek taxation patrol.

4)

Description: If you absolutely positively need to build a megacity in the Border Zone, like if you saw 'The Hub' and said "I could do better than that" then here you go, here is the space for you. Plenty of room to build the megabase of your dreams, plenty of flat space, and pretty good resource percentages. It's not a bad spot.

The only downside is, like The Hub, you might need to content yourself with just building a big ringed wall around your city, because walling off all the little pathable sections of cliff characters can walk up might be too annoying.

You may wanna make a few wells though, since the water here isn't great, but it's not terrible either.

Resources: 90-100% iron, 70-80% copper, 100% stone, ~35% water, 89% fertility

Dangers: Dust bandits, starving bandits, prayer day, black dragon ninjas maybe.

5)

Description: Another pretty sweet cliff base! This one has a bit more room on top, such that you could actually install a few different buildings. An Outpost IV for instance fits nicely. This is one of the first spots I surveyed, but I came back to it much later and sort of had a different impression of it after I realized how annoying most of the area here is to build on. However, as you'll see in the screenshot above, I put down two walls to cordon off a large section behind the camera of unattractive, sloped cliffside not shown here.

If you look to the top right of the image you can see a watchtower, this indicates the only other entrance to this little cliff area. There's a couple copper nodes in here and plenty of iron, but I only found one spot to place a stone drill.

Notably, if you did away with the walls here you could have MUCH more room to build out into, but it's sort of ugly terrain, so you may want to follow my example, and try and fit all your base structures into the area I walled off above. All in all, really fond of this place.

Also, the copper value is all over the place because it heavily depends on how many drills you feel you need, and it gets progressively worse the more you have since it is hard to get to.

Resources: 90% iron, 50-60-70-80% copper, 70-80% stone, 40-60% water, 88-92% fertility

Dangers: Dust bandits, starving bandits, prayer day, black dragon ninjas maybe, cannibal raids.

6)

Description: Known as 'Rainbow Valley' to the community (I don't know where the name came from but that is what it is called) this location is ideal for newbies, because it's right where most players start the game, and you... mostly... only have to deal with relatively weak raids, and you can get all the essential resources you need and you have space to build. It is not an incredibly interesting location, but it's visually appealing and it ticks a lot of boxes.

Resources: 90% iron, ~70-80% copper, 100% stone, 60% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: hungry/dust bandits, Shek, band of bones

2-B) Burning Forest, The Black Desert

Burning Forest

NOTE: I did survey the entire forest but most of it ended up being too frustrating to build on, not interesting enough, or similar to The Swamp, too loaded with random trees and other annoying doodads which made most of the area too laggy and too annoying to be worth your time.

1)

Description: Watch out for acid rain! Fortunately it's a relatively mild problem. Anyway, it's the Burning Forest. Acid rain! Blood spiders. Now, blood spiders can be pretty scary, and the penalty for losing to them is pretty severe, so watch out for that.

Building walls around the iron deposit down the hill is slightly annoying if you place your drills too far down. Also, you need to build your wells further down the hill.

Resources: 90-100% iron, 100% copper, 50% stone, 10-100% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Blood spiders! Swamp raptors eating your crops.

The Black Desert

WARNING: DO NOT EVEN ENTER THIS ZONE WITHOUT 100% GAS PROTECTION (a Fog Mask, Mask Type III or Swamp Ninja Mask) FOR YOUR HUMAN, SHEK & HIVER CHARACTERS! Consider yourself warned!

Additionally, it is NOT recommended you make The Black Desert your first base, unless you are playing a skeleton-only faction.

1)

Description: If you need a lot of space for building, this is probably the best spot in the Black Desert to set up shop! It's nothing special really, in the grand scheme of this list, but given the richness of resources here, this spot would be great for a skeleton-only base or manufactory.

One thing to note is, no water, no fertility, no rain even, so your only hope for food here is Moisture Farming Enhanced. And hydroponics also.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Please read the above general WARNING for the Black Desert. Additionally, look out for cloud ninjas and possibly dust bandit raids.

2)

Description: Unlike the Black Desert #1 this spot has less overall space but you can sort of build in a nice long line, I guess. This zone in general, you have a lot of flexibility with where you put your drills. So that's nice.

As above, good spot for skeleton-only squads. No water, no fertility. Get mods to fix this, for instance Moisture Farming Enhanced, to be paired with hydroponics.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Please read the above general WARNING for the Black Desert. Additionally, look out for cloud ninjas and possibly dust bandit raids.

2-C) Cannibal Plains

Cannibal Plains
1)

Description: This spot is within spitting distance of a Cannibal village, and a short walk's distance of the Capital. The wall in the above screenshot indicates where the border of the village's build radius is, so you do not have a HUGE amount of room to build here, but there's a nice plateau here.

Other thing to note is there's no fertility or water on the plateau, however there's ample resources and fertility and water just down the west side of the hill. You could probably make an extra large fortress, building backward down the hill, or build all your resource structures down the hill (where there is an extra set of copper nodes, iron nodes, etc.) and build your houses and such up the hill. Or, you could simply put like 10 wells down to gather water and do Hydroponics. Lots of flexibility here.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 20% water, 0% fertility but much better down the hill

Dangers: Cannibal raids, cannibals, cannibals. Cannibals. Lots of cannibals. Maybe Iron Spiders?

2)

Description: Just very slightly south from the above location. Not bad though. Wall is indication of the nearby town's ownership radius, you can't build past there. You actually have enough fertility to get good yields (101% wheat, ~80% vegetable, ~106% hemp) on regular farms, so you don't need hydroponics, but the water still is bad, so just make several wells.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 20% water, complex fertility

Dangers: Cannibal raids, cannibals, cannibals. Cannibals. Lots of cannibals. Maybe Iron Spiders?

Special Note: You could technically just build one long megabase out of this location and the above location (#1) since they're very close.

3)

Description: This spot is actually great, it has incredible crop yields (117% wheat!), great resource availability, it's right on the coast, and you have plenty of room to build.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: I saw some berserkers here for some reason, but as usual, cannibals. Cannibal raids.

4)

Description: This spot is kind of aesthetically pleasing, so I felt it was worth mentioning. The rocks in the middle of the valley here will probably disappear once you start building but hey, this little canyon's kind of nice. Could build yourself a neat little Orgrimmar here or whatever.

The drills up on the top left are iron mines at 100%, the ones below it are only 50% yield, which might not be enough for you. In the middle are 50% copper drills and on the right is a stone mine at 100%. So not too bad resources, but they are sort of all in the way of your buildings, possibly.

Also, as above, great fertility all around here.

Resources: 50% iron (100% up on the hill), 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, cannibals, cannibals. Cannibals. Lots of cannibals.

5)

Description: Literally right across from a Cannibal Village, but hey, it just means you can bully them with harpoons and stuff all the more readily. Still, has all the resources you need, it's a little cramped, but you should be able to fit all your buildings in here.

Wall in the screenshot indicates the nearby village's circle of influence, can't build past that point.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibals.

Special Note: This location would probably suck to defend, you're in a valley surrounded by cliffs and there are multiple routes down, but you could probably just wall off most of them.

6)

Description: This is just like Cannibal Plains #3 up above, but worse. I'd recommend checking out that one, but this is technically a perfectly good spot to set up. The resources here are spread out a little bit more, and stone is a bit more tricky to find.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 90% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibals!

2-C) Cannibal Plains Pt. 2

7)

Description: Perfectly good location, nothing special really. Some interesting height differential, copper on the left, iron on the right. It's almost exactly on the border between Northern Coast and The Hidden Forest, it's also near to World's End, so that's nice at least, you have a few options to sprint to in order to sell things you make, or buy stuff in a hurry if needed.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibals? I don't know?

8)

Description: Like the area above (#7). Almost same spot. There's an interesting little spot in the middle where you could put a watchtower I suppose.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibals!

9)

Description: This spot is great for a variety of reasons, you have TONS of iron, you've got copper, grow basically anything except riceweed, but I suspect the permanent rain here is just visual and won't actually feed your crops. You get 80% water here anyway, so no big deal. You even have some flat terrain. You're also close to World's End, Flotsam and Armour king, there's a road from you to right down the entrance to Wend. There's a solid cliff you can connect your walls to as well. Only trouble is you have to deal with 50-60% stone, it's not the best.

Cannibals should be the only thing raiding you here and they will probably approach you from the north, where you have plenty of room to build defenses.

The more I look at this one, the more I like it. It doesn't look very impressive but it ticks a lot of boxes.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 50-60% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibals...? Maybe Floodlands spiders or skeletons?

2-C) Cheaters Run, The Crags, The Crater

Cheaters Run
1)

Description: Appropriately, you'll need to 'cheat' to unlock this place's potential. In other words, mods. Deep Drill Mining so you can get stone, and Moisture Farming Enhanced for water. You also need hydroponics. Very photogenic, calm location though. Well worth checking out.

Resources: 40% iron, 20% copper, 0% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: You'll figure it out.

2)

Description: The Horn of Helm Hammerhand will sound in the deep, one last time! Welcome to the last stand location of your dreams. You almost have TOO MUCH space to build, here, honestly, and you will need mods (Deep Drill Mining, Moisture Farming Enhanced) to take advantage of this location. Also, you need hydroponics researched also.

Once you're set up, maybe try angering every faction in the game and seeing how many raids you can survive. Or something.

Resources: 50% iron, 20% copper, 0% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: You'll figure it out.

The Crags

NOTE: This zone is similar to Spider Plains in that it has some interesting cliffs, but none of them are really large enough and flat enough to fit a full base, and the whole zone has such similar topography that none of it really caught my eye. A perfectly okay zone, but very boring, it reminded me of the Stenn Desert.

The Crater
1)

Description: There's really no location in specific here that stands out, in The Crater, but I'll shoutout the middle of the zone. If you're even thinking about building here you need hydroponics, you also need water so you'll want Moisture Farming Enhanced, no doubt, and while you're at it the minerals kind of suck also, so maybe pick up Deep Drill Mining as well.

Not much else to say. Except this place is extremely dangerous for low-level, under-equipped squads, so watch out! No joke!

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: BEAK THINGS. LOTS OF THEM.

2-D) Darkfinger, Deadlands, Dreg

Darkfinger
1)

Description: Got some resources, a nice little hill here where you can build your central watchtower where you house your most prized possessions. Maybe build a little throne on top and have your skeleton Lord God-Emperor peer out upon the lands of Darkfinger, his eternal domain, unswerving in his bold gaze... or something.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Please refer to the above screenshot.

2)

Description: Check it! A location where there's absolutely NOTHING. It also comes up as 'NONE' but forget that, I'm not doing that, I'm assuming that's an oversight because this spot really should be labelled Darkfinger. Anyway, there's nothing here, bring your mods, make sure you have Deep Drill Mining & so on, otherwise this place will have very little use for you.

I point this spot out because, I simply like the nice coastal beach town atmosphere here. Nice little beach area, with some warm sands, red palm trees, some tasteful mesa-looking rocks. And you have TONS of space.

Also, you got 100% water and 100% fertility slightly to the north, maybe put all your food production over there, then you don't need to worry about hydroponics.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 0%-100% water, 0-100% fertility

Dangers: Cannibals! Bonedogs? Pretty safe honestly.

Deadlands
1)

Description: If Iron Valley #1 tickled your fancy but you thought it too cramped and small, this location may be for you! Check it out. You got copper, iron, no stone or water or fertility though. Hydroponics only, and you'll want Deep Drill Mining for stone. For pure vanilla players, you could use the rain itself to supply your hydroponics, and there is a spot you can get up to 20% stone at the bottom of the cliff to the west, but it's pretty tragic.

Watch out for the outpost nearby, since as indicated by the wall I built in the screenshot, it will prevent you building nearby. Also, mind the acid rain. Dustcoats! Iron hats! Both maybe!

Resources: 50-75% iron, 100% copper, 0-20% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Iron spiders wandering into your base That's about it. Acid rain?

2)

Description: Kind of a nice spot, you get your Deadlands chic with a bit of powdery stuff that looks like snow in from the Grey Desert. There's some room to build here, from the ores shown in the screenshot above you can go either northeast or south. Could even do both and just have a very long base. Whatever works. The area to the south however has a sloping ramp that leads directly into acid, which may be useful, since you could set up a single gate entrance there, and force raids against your base to attempt to enter through the acid by swimming to you, significantly weakening them.

You got all your ores, which is nice, but no water or fertility so hydroponics only! Put them on the roof of your buildings so they have access to the acid rain. Rain collector will not work.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 70% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Iron spiders maybe? Pretty quiet spot honestly.

Special Note: For pure vanilla players, this is also the only location I could find in the Deadlands that doesn't require any mods. All you need is hydroponics!

3)

Description: Nothing here, need Deep Drill Mining, Moisture Farming Enhanced, hydroponics, the works. However! If you want to base in the Deadlands, this is the grand champion of Deadlands locations that feel like you are based in the Deadlands. If that makes any sense. Deadlands artifacts and objects will fill your base, and will surround you, and you're going to feel like you are in the melted, acid-washed remains of scrap metal and slag.

Good spot for skeleton-only factions. If your crew is badass enough, you can even be real chads and just not have walls, and live like the skeletons of Black Desert City.

Resources: 0% nothing

Dangers: Iron spiders roaming, acid rain

Dreg

NOTE: Dreg sucks don't bother.

2-E) The Eye

The Eye
1)

Description: Not a bad flat bit of terrain. It's kind of hilly, but not too much so. Nothing special, but you get a nice view here.

You may want Moisture Farming Enhanced or a LOT of wells to fuel your farms.

Resources: 100% iron, 70% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, 80-90% fertility

Dangers: Sand Ninjas, Grass Ninjas, Manhunter squads, Bloodraider squads, thrall squads, roaming skimmers as well as bonedogs. If that wasn't enough, UC & Trader's Guild events too.

2)

Description: Kind of nice, if you want to make like a perfectly squared off compound, or perhaps some kind of star fort style base. You have plenty of room, it's plenty flat, this whole spot is very gently sloped but not enough that it'll trouble you when building. You may also note that there's no big ore rocks here, you get your iron and copper straight from the weird scrap laying on the ground, which makes drill placement really simple!

As above, you may want Moisture Farming Enhanced or just a LOT of wells to adequately get the water you need.

Resources: 100% iron, 70% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, 75-85% fertility

Dangers: Sand Ninjas, Grass Ninjas, Manhunter squads, Bloodraider squads, thrall squads, roaming skimmers as well as bonedogs. If that wasn't enough, UC & Trader's Guild events too.

3)

Description: As you can CLEARLY see above this is definitely The Eye. It might not look like it, since it looks sort of like a hybrid between three or four different biomes, but it's The Eye. So if you want to say "Me? I live in The Eye." but then post a screenshot that looks like the Grey Desert crossed with something sandy, here you go.

This spot is probably worth checking out if you want something similar to the Grey Desert, but REALLY flat, and also you want to be in UC territory. The Grey Desert is just outside of UC territory, but The Eye is inside it, so you can sort of have the best of both worlds here.

If you really want, you can make like 20 wells so you can take advantage of the 10% water here, but you also might want to just use Moisture Farming Enhanced.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Sand Ninjas, Grass Ninjas, Manhunter squads, Bloodraider squads, thrall squads, roaming skimmers as well as bonedogs. If that wasn't enough, UC & Trader's Guild events too.

2-F) Fishman Island, Flats Lagoon

Fishman Island
1)

Description: Thanks to the 'no-build' zone from the nearby town, this is really the only spot in the zone you can set up. Don't try building further west, it won't work, so instead if you need more room build towards the two bridges to the east. Heck, that might even be useful, since if you have one or both bridges gated off maybe you can really use them as a seriously constricting chokepoint!

Don't be fooled by the way, the rain here is USUALLY harmless, but it's also sometimes acid rain! I don't actually think it ever stops raining, so you might not even need wells.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Flats Lagoon
1)

Description: The resources suck, but it's still probably the best spot to set up in the entire zone. Your other options are pretty bad. You can just barely fit a stationhouse on the tiny islet to the south, the one attached to the landmass here, along with some walls. Might make a neat spot to put some kind of prison or something else that requires heavy security, the only problem with that idea is your proximity to the nearby city.

Anyway, pick up Deep Drill Mining at least to make minerals here.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 50% water, 87% fertility

Dangers: Gorillo bandits? Beak things? Boneyard wolves? Bonedogs? Black dogs and landbats.

2-F) Floodlands, Fog Islands

Floodlands
1)

Description: I wanted to give Floodlands at least ONE spot in this entire guide. The prospect window here lies, and in the valley down below (the, ahem, Hidden Forest side of the valley) you can get up to 80-90% fertility, so 80-90% crop yield on wheat, hemp and there is a VERY narrow strip where you can grow vegetables.

The iron drills are on the left here, and you could probably move them back, and west, further into the Floodlands side of the valley, to give you more building space up on top of the cliff, which is decently flat. There's plenty of iron to be had around, but it can be tricky to get exactly 100%. Stone is very scarce here so you either need to put the stone mine in a very specific spot to get 70% or move it around a bit and settle for 50%.

This spot has very annoyingly specific resource locations, which made this synopsis much longer than I expected.

Like several other locations in this guide, good luck walling it all off! Some cliffs are pathable and some are not.

Resources: 90-100% iron, 100% copper, 50-70% stone, 100% water, the prospect says 100% green, 50% arid, but this part of the zone at least does not have arid, so no cactus and only 80% fertility.

Dangers: Cannibal raids, maybe iron spiders, maybe bonedogs.

Special Note: Just to be specific, here below I've indicated the spot where you can put a few vegetable farms. Of course, you could always just do hydroponics I guess...

2)

Description: I'm giving this one to Floodlands too since MOST of your resources will be on the Floodlands side of the fence - however, like 50% of the space here is also Hidden Forest. Bizarrely, almost this entire area is ALL fertile, you can plant everything but cactus and riceweed at 100% fertility 100% yield. Plenty of room to improvise and change your ore drill locations, except for copper which is only one node here.

Of note, stone is a little tricky to find here, there's 80% up on the hill above but I can't find a way to place the mine. Maybe 60% below the hill.

Not the best building area for a big fully-featured base since there's a lot of water and a lot of slopes, but if you don't mind building slanted buildings this will do the job! Maybe good for a Flotsam rest-stop or something.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 40-80% stone

Dangers: Iron spiders, cannibals, maybe dust bandits or prayer day? Bonedogs???

Fog Islands

NOTE: Fog Islands is unusually rich in basically every single resource. If you really want you can base almost ANYWHERE inside the entire zone, so I'm ONLY going to indicate the most notable spots.

1)

Description: Just a ridiculous amount of iron here, you have all the resources and you're situated right at a gap in the wall that bars you from Obedience. You have to go fairly far south I think to find the next gap that let you enter the Fog Islands so, I assume you probably won't get too many fogmen up here, you're right next to a Hive Village so you can pick up resources if you need, and you have a TON of flat space behind the camera here to build whatever you could possibly want.

If you just want some flat terrain and ALL the resources, this is the place for you.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 75% arid 70% green

Dangers: Fogmen maybe? Maybe Shrieking Bandits? Maybe Cannibal raids? Probably not TOO dangerous a spot.

2)

Description: If there's any spot on this list you recognize actually it's probably this one, this spot is pretty legendary if only because it's one of the only locations people talk about when you do a web search for 'kenshi base locations'. And for good reason. You got all your resources, it's a nice plateau, easy to defend, you're neck-deep in fogmen so if the cannibals come calling you're safe, and it's very likely no other faction will ever bother you.

However, this can be a bit of a double-edged sword since sometimes I actually get bored with how little you need to worry about enemies assaulting you. Fogmen won't even organize to attack you, really. Also, the water here sucks, but put your wells in the middle and you get 30% which isn't too bad.

Resources: 90-100% iron, 90% copper, 100% stone, 10-30% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Fogmen! Cannibal raids.

3)

Description: Well, you can set up here if you want, there's a nice through-line into the Fog Islands, you can get resources, yeah it's fine. There is not a lot to say about this spot, but I point it out because it fulfills all your resource needs, there's no prayer day, and you only have to contend with cannibal raids.

There's a couple of cliff walls you can walk on, you could build stuff up on those and then keep your resources in this little valley here.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 80-100% fertility

Dangers: Fogmen. Cannibals. Fogmen. Cannibals. Maybe Beak Things, idk

4)

Description: A really really great spot. If you have a look at my drills here you can sort of get them onto the slope in the back, it feels a bit like cable management, you can just tuck them out of sight. You get great resource percents here and a nice, bowl-shaped area surrounded by cliff walls that are for the most part quite solid.

Only trouble is it's actually kind of boring. The fogmen in my experience did not bother me very often, and though you do get cannibal raids, this area is incredibly easy to defend. Also, placement of your resources is a little tricky, it's not THAT bad, but it might be a little frustrating.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Fogmen, cannibal raids.

2-F) Forbidden Isle

Forbidden Isle
1)

Description: When you absolutely positively must live on the very edge of the map, accept no substitutes. When you absolutely must live so close to the edge of the map that the prospect window doesn't work quite properly. The ground is flat, and you have plenty of space to build.

You may want Deep Drill Mining just so you can get at a source of copper that isn't next to the building nearby with the annoying 'no-build zone'.

Resources: 100% iron, 20-30% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Iron spiders, not much else.

2)

Description: I'm honestly not sure WHY you would want to base here, but it's as good a spot as any. Like this whole zone there's no thematic reason I can imagine why you should go here and build a fortress or whatever. But! In the event you need to, this spot will do well enough.

If you look carefully, there's a wall I put down on the right to indicate the nearby no-build zone. It's not terribly large, so it shouldn't much get in your way.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, ~80% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: The neighbors, but also iron spiders.

3)

Description: You're gonna need Deep Drill Mining for this spot, on account of the copper deficit. But hey! Aside from that, a pretty nice spot! It's a lovely little peninsula just off the side of the isle. You're right at the edge of the map! Woo. You have plenty of room to build the megacity of your dreams, and you'll probably be left entirely alone.

Unlike Forbidden Isle #2 for instance where, you never really know what the AI is going to do, like if some faction just decides to come attack you they might swim across the ocean or come up the isle and it might be annoying to focus all your defenses - but at THIS spot, you are literally at the edge of the world, they've gotta come at you from the west!

Also a funny quirk is the far eastern tip here counts as 'NONE' so you get 0% water if you put your well there.

Resources: 100% iron, 0% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Iron spiders!

4)

Description: I don't really have any strong recommendation for this spot, it's kind of neat, that's about it. Why's it even here? Well, there's not much to the 'Forbidden Isle' zone so I may as well list 'em all.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Iron. Spiders.

2-G) Greenbeach

Greenbeach
1)

Description: Don't mind the '16' that's just a grid reference from NiceMap. Anyway, hey check it out! This island is shaped like a sword. Looks like a cutlass or something. You will need Deep Drill Mining for this spot, since no iron or copper nearby, there's some stone though so there's that.

Maybe try to work something with 'Sword' into your faction name. The Sword Ninjas. Blade Bandits. Steel Mercenaries. I don't know. Maybe the Shamshir Pirates?

Then do nothing but manufacture swords, steal swords from other people, and have a shrine for worshiping swords. I've never done this before I'm just trying to give you some kind of guidance as to why you would ever base out here, on an island shaped like a curved sword.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 50-90% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: I actually saw a crab raider squad AND a reaver squad duking it out so I guess watch out for those guys. Watch out for crabs as well, and possibly beak things. You might also get UC events.

2)

Description: This island isn't as cool as the sword island (Greenbeach #1), but it is right nearby, so you could settle both if you really want! Similar to that one you probably want Deep Drill Mining so you can actually get minerals etc.

Also there's only a couple VERY SPECIFIC spots you can get water, so you may also want Moisture Farming Enhanced. There's no fertility, so you NEED hydroponics.

This all sort of combines to make this spot seem pretty crap, or at least, a bit too cramped to really build a fully self-sufficient, crowded base, so I'd more recommend this one for like a hermit type of character or small low population faction, one living out of maybe a watchtower with a couple of stormhouses for hydroponics and storage, or something to that effect.

This also technically counts as a 'NONE' zone but I don't care.

Resources: 0-8% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 0-80% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: I saw a LOT of crabs patrolling here, you also might see crab raiders, maybe reavers, maybe nothing, this island counts as NONE so their pathfinding might steer them clear of here.

3)

Description: If you like crabs, this is the place for you.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 93%

Dangers: Crabs. Gutters.

4)

Description: If You Like Crabs, This Is The Place For You: Island Edition

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 80% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Crabs. Beak Things.

5)

Description: It's mildly annoying that you don't get copper out here, but you DO get everything else, so... maybe pick up Deep Drill Mining. Doing it just for that seems kinda sucky... but oh well.

It's a chill little island, not much else to say.

Resources: 90% iron, 0% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Crabs, crab raiders.

2-G) Grey Desert, Greyshelf

Grey Desert

1)

Description: If you actually like the black & white snow (or more probable ash) look, and the nice sweeping hills of Grey Desert, this is the spot for you. It's the location deepest into the zone, so you can at least feel like you're in a unique sort of location. There's a waystation nearby too, within spitting distance, which is kind of nice. It's too close, in fact, so it almost intrudes onto your building zone, as indicated by the wall in the screenshot above, however if you simply build further to the north it will not be a problem. You also have plenty of room back there, so maybe check this one out.

Strategically, this is not a bad place to be, you're right next to Black Desert City, the UC is just up north, and you're just barely in their zone of influence. Also, keep in mind no water to be had here, so you'll want Moisture Farming Enhanced, but unusually for this sort of location you actually have some fertility, so hydroponics optional.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 0% water, ~90% fertility

Dangers: Trader's guild events, dust bandit raids, possibly skimmers, bloodraiders, cloud ninjas, slavers, rebel farmers, iron spiders, black dog, thralls... lots of stuff

2)



Description: Not as cool as Grey Desert #1, and you'll have to deal with all the trouble of being right on the edge of the zone. I figured I may as well mention it though because it's as good a place to set up as #1, and interestingly you should be just outside the dust bandit circle of influence. Also, you might have to deal with more of the neighboring zone's roaming enemies, which might be troublesome. It's fine though. This spot is also agonizingly flat, except for the hill pictured above, and you have plenty of space to build.

You also might want to pick up Moisture Farming Enhanced since there is no water here.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 0% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Trader's guild events, possibly skimmers, bloodraiders, cloud ninjas, slavers, rebel farmers, iron spiders, black dog, thralls... lots of stuff

Greyshelf

NOTE: I thought Greyshelf was cool but after spending a bunch of time surveying it I quickly grew to hate it because there's nowhere good to base here, all of the good spots are already taken by Hivers, and the rest is just miserable, grey, rocky nothingness. Pass on this one.

2-G) Gut

Gut

NOTE: If you are unfamiliar with Gut, take note this zone is VERY hazardous and NOT friendly to low-level squads. That is all.

1)

Description: Not an amazing spot, but you have your resources and this little area is sort of on a plateau. You don't have a HUGE amount of space and you will really want to put up walls FAST but hey. There's also an extra copper node behind the iron tree, and really, you probably don't need eight drills, so you can reclaim some space that way if you really want.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, ~90% fertility

Dangers: Beak things.

2)

Description: I passed over this spot at first, but after a thorough exploration of Gut this place ended up looking pretty good. I didn't like at first that you don't have a lot of space, but on looking outward into the waters, you actually have a decent chunk of land here if you get really liberal with the walls, and the Slopeless mod. I don't think vanilla Kenshi lets you build on water, so this spot might not be for everybody, in which case I recommend you look at Gut #1 or Gut #3.

But anyway, if you DO choose to build here, it's pretty great actually. Excellent resources, some nice interesting watery terrain, and I would actually recommend building a couple of outposts in the water itself, the entranceways pointed out towards the shoreline, you could build your own little Venice here. Might be pretty.

The above screenshot is a reflection of my recommendation for walls, most of the time it seems fairly obvious or flexible what you should or should not wall, but in this case I felt I should offer some guidance. The gate is facing inland, at the top left of base, and while there you might not have room for a double-gate airlock, this is Gut so your enemies will have to pass through a few enemies to even get here first.

I also like that you can keep your copper drills (if you are using them) in the little valley out of the way of the blue plateaus you'll probably want to save for your buildings.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Gutters.

Special Note: There's a camp to the east of you, but it's not a friendly place, so I'd avoid it.

3)

Description: Probably the most boring place in Gut to settle, but also the easiest and most effective. It's so boring I had to check the screenshot I took earlier to remind myself of what it looks like. The above screenshot doesn't show you the entirety of your buildable area, you have plenty of room to the left and to the right of the camera, so if you want to build a nice big city in Gut, here you go, this is the place for you.

This spot may seem like it's right on the edge of the zone, but I still saw plenty of gutters around. If you REALLY want enemies to wade through maximum gutters to reach your base, consider setting up at Gut #2 instead.

If you would prefer not to have a giant iron tree in the middle of your base, you could offset it to the left or right, such that it stands on one side of your city or the other, but it might make a nice roleplay element. Perhaps your faction considers iron 'holy', and therefore these trees are divine. Okay I'm done talking about this area now.

Resources: 100% iron, ~50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, ~90% fertility

Dangers: I don't want to spoil the surprise.

2-G) The Great Desert

The Great Desert

Description: This location has some nice stratified rock. Kinda nice. It might be a pain to wall off and the ore drill locations are ugly, but hey! It works. It has a nice view into the Great Desert.

Resources: ~90% iron, ~60% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, ~80% fertility

Dangers: ALL kinds of crap. Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, sand ninja, slave hunters, city heroes, slaver caravans, and noble hunters.

2)

Description: Only like spitting distance into the desert, but hey, fairly flat, plenty of room, resources, it's fine. The triangular shape here is sort of nice.

Resources: 100% iron, 70% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, 75-80% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, sand ninja, slave hunters, city heroes, slaver caravans, and noble hunters.

3)

Description: I mostly put this one here for the unique look, you have a GIGANTIC chunk of sand to build on. The slope is more aggressive than it looks, so you may have trouble building on it, but hey whatever. Personally, I would probably keep the ore drills and such up in the top of your base, and build down the hill towards the water where the slope is at its gentlest.

Resources: 90% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 60% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, sand ninja, slave hunters, city heroes, slaver caravans, and noble hunters.

4)

Description: Just another place you can build a base. In this instance, you're right near a town, which is kind of nice, you have all the resources you need, and a lovely view of the ocean. I just hope you like the taste of cactus.

Resources: 100% iron, 70% copper, 100% stone, 30% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, sand ninja, slave hunters, city heroes, slaver caravans, and noble hunters.

5)

Description: If you hate the water, but you sorta want to be in the northernmost central sort of bit of the Great Desert, this is the spot for you. It was at this point I started to realize, the Great Desert is a lot more fertile and full of useful resources than I first thought.

This spot more so than some of the others, like #1-#4, is actually close to a road, so you might see more random squads traveling than those locations.

Resources: 100% iron, 70% copper, 100% copper, 10% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, sand ninja, slave hunters, city heroes, slaver caravans, and noble hunters.

6)

Description: I almost walked past this one but I stepped onto the beach here and saw the resources and decided well okay, I mentioned the other beach spot just nearby, I may as well point this one out too because it's excellent, even better maybe.

This whole little area is one perfectly flat oven tray, it's great, and all the resources are sort of out on the edges of the place where you would actually want to build your buildings. One Great Desert spot I would actually consider using myself.

Also, of note you can see just a real cluster disaster of corpses on the sand in the above screenshot. As I was setting up to get screenshots a noble hunter and his guards attacked and then some skimmers came along and some bounty hunters came along and it just turned into complete chaos, so that should be some indication of just how chaotic the Great Desert can be, and that you WILL see traffic through here.

Resources: 100% iron, 70% copper, 100% stone, 30% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, sand ninja, slave hunters, city heroes, slaver caravans, and noble hunters.

2-G) The Great Desert Pt. 2, The Grid

7)

Description: If you like the weirdo look this spot has, or can tolerate it, this is probably not a bad location to set up. Being right in the middle, between four different cities, is probably a useful thing. You've got plenty of places to sell off stuff, buy stuff, whatever you need. The terrain here is, mostly, nice and flat, and your drills are out of the way. Good stuff.

Resources: 100% iron, 60-70% copper, 100% stone, 20-30% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, sand ninja, slave hunters, city heroes, slaver caravans, and noble hunters.

8)

Description: The wall you see in the FAR distance, is the no-build exclusion zone around the nearby Fort Mirage. Not much of a problem! You are RIGHT in the heart of the UC now, so probably a nice place to set up if you're roleplaying as an ally of them. This is also notable as it is one of the flattest areas to build I found in the center of the Great Desert. Stone sucks a bit though.

Resources: 100% iron, 70% copper, 40-50% stone, 10% water, 80-90% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, sand ninja, slave hunters, city heroes, slaver caravans, and noble hunters.

The Grid
1)

Description: For those of you miffed at the paltry Swamp support in this guide, this is the place for you! This spot is technically right on the border between The Swamp and The Grid, so you get a bit of both, which is important! Above you can see I have placed drills for iron, in back, drills for copper, on the right, and on the left I have a stone drill also. There's a stormhouse and a stationhouse for the sake of scale, to give you an idea of just how much space you have to work with here - a surprising amount!

You should be able to fit a complete base in here. Consider building an Outpost III or two on top of the pond, I thought it looked nice.

So this spot is great. You get to wall off The Grid to the rest of the world, for what reason I really couldn't say, but it aesthetically looks neat, disregarding all the annoying crap that'll bother you endlessly as you try to build, such as the plants and tree roots and such. You need to place your farm stuff near the entrance of this little canyon, so before you start building you may want to check you have room for crops!

You could also simply have them outside your walls, further into swampland, whatever works for you!

Resources: 70-90% iron, 90% copper, 50% stone, 0-100% water, 0-100% fertility

Dangers: Some beak things, river raptors maybe, not much else?

Special Note: Once you've started building, some of the more annoying stuff will disappear once you save/reload!

2-H) Heng

Heng
1)

Description: A nice flat area to build in that sort of encroaches on the Great Desert zone. I actually at first was going to list this under that one but all the prospects I did kept saying 'Heng' so here we are.

Resources: 100% iron, 70% copper, 100% stone, 10-15% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, slave hunters, city heroes, slave traders, drifter squads

2)

Description: Do you like a good sunrise? Well, this is the build location for you! Trust me. That's... really all that's notable about it though. There's basically nothing out here. It won't really be all that calm, since I've seen roaming squads and so on out here anyway.

Resources: 100% iron, 70% copper, 40% stone, 10% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, slave hunters, city heroes, slave traders, drifter squads

3)

Description: This is the place to be if you like the look of Howler Maze, but you really want to live in Heng. And maybe pay taxes. And be pursued by the cops if you manufacture hashish.

Resources: 100% iron, 50-70% copper, 60-80% stone, 30% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, slave hunters, city heroes, slave traders, drifter squads, possibly crabs?

4)

Description: I actually didn't really expect to find anything over here, I sort of stumbled on this one. I kind of like it the more I look at it actually. This big quarry-like hole in the ground is for those of you who want a different building experience to the typical flat terrain in this guide. The slopes surrounding the hole are kind of gentle enough you can build on, but unless you like leaning buildings you may wanna rely on Outpost IIIs and similar structures that build nicely on slopes.

One pro tip is you can turn buildings around so the entrance faces the rim of the crater, this can sometimes allow you to build structures almost completely flat. If you take note of the location of the Outpost IV in the above screenshot, there's some perfectly flat terrain there also you can put some structures down, and it is enough to fit two stationhouses and a snailhouse. More than enough for anyone.

Lot of flexibility for such a location.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% stone, 60-70% copper, 10-15% water, 75-93% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, slave hunters, city heroes, slave traders, drifter squads

5)

Description: A nice little valley if you want that vanilla ice-cream, chocolate brownie look to your base. It's right near Heng, but if you look at the above screenshot, and see the wall, that is where the 'no-build' zone roughly starts, and behind the camera which you can't see, you have a TON of flat space towards the north.

The real limiting factor here is copper, there's only one node on the other side of the hill, my copper drills here are positioned just for aesthetic reasons so I'm only getting ~50% copper, which imo is more than enough. You could get more by placing them at the top of the hill or on the other side, but that might look ugly. There is, however, iron to the north, at what would be the opposite corner of your base, which might be useful if you want to build a rectangular-shaped base, and build further in the direction of away from Heng.

Resources: 100% iron, 50-70% copper, 100% stone, 30% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, vagrant bandits, manhunters, slave hunters, city heroes, slave traders, drifter squads

2-H) Hidden Forest

Hidden Forest
1)

Description: This spot is pretty amazing, I have to say. You're in a nice valley basin, plenty of room to build, you can grow almost anything here, you're right on the border with Northern Coast, the north 30% of the valley is Northern Coast biome and has arid as well as generally better fertility for growing certain crops, so experiment.

The copper nodes (on the left in the above image) are on the cliff, but you can still get like 40-50% from your drills. The central copper node is the only one you can reliably mine by hand, though. Iron is on the right. Stone is a little tricky, 70% near the middle or 70-80% over near the iron ore drills, on the right.

Resources: 100% iron, 40-50% copper, 70-80% stone, 80-100% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Cannibals, bonedogs, starving bandits... you may get UC events out here, as well as possibly prayer day due to proximity to Arm of Okran but I'm not sure.

2)

Description: Not the most appealing screenshot but this little valley is worth checking out, it's mostly enclosed, the road up above leads to Wend. This is also not a bad spot for a Flotsam base, because it is right next to the road to Rebirth.

This particular spot, like some others around here, has pretty bad copper at only 15-20%, but all the other resources are outstanding. The stone is annoying though, because there's one spot closer to the west side of the cliff at 50%, and one further north, at around 90% stone. Not a huge problem.

Walling might be annoying but a nice spot overall.

Resources: 100% iron, 15-20% copper, 50-90% stone, 90-95% fertility, 100% green

Dangers: Cannibals, bonedogs...

2-H) High Bonefields

High Bonefields
1)

Description: Here's yet another vertical multi-tiered cliff base! My only worry here is you might have too MUCH room. This is just the 'front' side of the cliff, there's another area on the other side you can use that is quite similar in size to this space here.

Actually pretty happy with this one, particularly since you get pretty good resources here.

Resources: 100% iron, 60-70% copper, ~70% stone, 25-60% water, 85-100% fertility

Dangers: Skin spiders, band of bones, boneyard wolves, bonedogs, beak things.

2)

Description: More space here than you might think. You've got just enough space for like a small to mid-sized base, I don't know if you could fit in every structure you want or need, but you CAN fit a couple stationhouses and your drills and your farms and that should be enough for anybody. Maybe dangle an Outpost III or two off the edge of the cliff, I don't know.

Strongly recommended for anyone who likes clifftop bases.

Resources: 90% iron, 60% copper, 70% stone, 40% water, 92% fertility

Dangers: Skin spiders, band of bones, boneyard wolves, bonedogs, beak things.

2-H) Howler Maze

Howler Maze
1)

Description: Wanna live kinda almost sorta in UC territory but don't want to be hassled by those two-bit bureaucratic bullies? Want a great place to stash and grow hashish right under the noses of the authorities!? This is the place for you! You're basically right on the edge of the Howler Maze zone, the only enemies that'll bother you are crabs, and you only need to put up with the little bitty problem of intermittent acid rain.

Not to worry! Just slap dustcoats, and maybe an iron hat or two, on your squishy melty humans. You'll not only solve your need to dress like a creepy drug pusher, but also your acid resistance at the same time!

If that ain't feasible, well, worst case scenario keep your humans indoors and use your hivers and skeletons for outdoor labor!

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 20-80% water (based on altitude), 83-93% fertility

Dangers: Crabs! And LOTS of them! Also, I strongly recommend you do not venture to the south-east. The ruins there are... extremely hazardous. Consider this a warning!

2)

Description: Just in case Howler Maze #1 did not grab your attention, this place is sure to impress. This time, it's on the other side of the island! That's about all that is different about it because the resources here are great. Except for water, which is terrible. Oh well. There's some lovely vegetation (by Kenshi standards) nearby, some beautiful trees, water, less rocky here. You might find some stark beauty in this location.

For Bonus Points, build a hashish production settlement here, while simultaneously building one at Howler Maze #1.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 20% water, 85-90% fertility

Dangers: Crabs!!! As above, I strongly recommend you avoid the ruin to your north-west! The ruins there are extremely dangerous! Consider yourself warned!

3)

Description: VERY solid. Much better than it appears. This hill is a deceptively gentle slope, and the trees will fade once you save and reload, or most of them anyway. This could result in a really nice look for your base. This area is absolutely saturated in ore too, so you could put way more drills than you'd ever really need down, and since you're low altitude here you'll get better water than Howler Maze #2.

For extra Bonus Points, build a hashish production settlement here as well as at Howler Maze #1 & #2! More hashish than your body has room for!

Resources: 100% iron, 50-60% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Crabs! Crabs. Like the other locations, watch out for the ruin in the centre of the island. Fortunately, this spot is pretty far from it.

4)

Description: I almost missed this one, but I stumbled on it while exploring Gut. Check it out! It's a nice lagoon looking area, aside from the whole hell-water thing. Not much to say, except that I hope you can either build on water a little so you can have your buildings face their entrances inland, or I guess you could just have all your ore over here and then put your buildings on the shoreline. Whatever.

Resources: 100% iron, 60% copper, 70% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Crabs, gutters maybe?

2-H) The Hook

The Hook
1)

Description: Mods! Gotta have 'em all. You need Deep Drill Mining to get ore because no iron/copper.

This location only barely made the list, I note it only because I sort of like the idea of being able to make a weird, artificial island-looking base with squared off walls out of this spot. This is also a place that is kind of cramped, and you may not have enough room to fit all of your base's necessities inside the walls, which I think of as an attribute here. This might be a decent spot to have all your buildings inside your walls, but your farms and drills outside the walls. It might look neat!

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, ~30% stone, 70% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: UC events, rebel farmers, slave hunters, manhunters, band of bones, slaver caravans, noble hunters.

2)

Description: Similar to South Wetlands #6 (which you may want to look at also if this spot looks appealing to you), this is just a GIANT flat football field you can use to build the absolute biggest city you could possibly want. There is a nearby waystation that will constrain your building zone a little, thanks to the no-build zone it projects, but you shouldn't have any trouble given just how huge this area is.

However, the minerals here are pretty bad, so you probably want Deep Drill Mining so you can fulfill your iron/copper/stone needs, and hey, that way you can also put all your drills in some corner of your city, well out of the way.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, ~40% stone, 70% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: UC events, rebel farmers, slave hunters, manhunters, band of bones, slaver caravans, noble hunters.

2-I) Iron Valley, Islands of None, The Iron Trail

Iron Valley
1)

Description: She may not look like much, but this spot's a real beauty. So, upfront, you can check the resources in the prospect window if you want, no resources. No problem! Just use Deep Drilling & Moisture Farming, which you may not need if you just put your hydroponics (which is mandatory here) on the roof. While you can't use rain collectors to gather acid rain, crops CAN grow from acid rain if exposed to it.

Anyway, what makes this spot great is, it is nice and compact, your enemies will probably be forced to walk through acid at some point, run up against an iron spider, broken skeleton, or even some black dragon ninjas. You also have only one entrance to defend. You're also right near the center of the map, and I don't even think it's possible for random squads to path into your base. Remember to pack dustcoats for your human characters.

Resources: 0% everything

Dangers: Acid rain, uhh. Raids? I don't even think any faction in the game really is stupid enough to raid your base.

The Iron Trail
1)

Description: An okay place to build. Not much to say. The nicest thing is the mountain, if you build walls into it, it will actually block enemies. You can't really build on or into it though. You're also right by the water, so that's nice.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green and 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, occasional Iron Spider.

2)

Description: Okay location, but walling it all off might be a pain. Nice flat terrain though. Not much else to say.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 50% stone, 80% water, 100% green and 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, occasional Iron Spider.

Special Note: This spot sits right in the middle of a weird stone black-hole, but you can still get 50% or even 100% if you look around a bit or expand.

3)

Description: Slightly easier than the above location to wall off since you can run a wall along the hill behind your base, and all of your ore is out of the way mostly. Not too bad. Not much to say though.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 80-90% stone, 80% water, 100% green and 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, occasional Iron Spider.

Islands of None

AKA: Heng's Tail, though this is unofficial and comes from... some mod I have, I don't know.

To address this inconsistency between my game and a vanilla version of Kenshi, allow me to reassure you with the following screenshots, just to make it clear that you will see the same resources I do:















1)

Description: I'll be honest, after finding this spot I don't see much point in you trying to build anywhere else on the Islands of None here. This one island has everything. You have excellent ores, great water, as well as very good fertility AND green plus arid!

Just for the sake of how lonely this place is and how perfect the resources are, I would probably recommend this for newbies or anything new to base-building in general. You have enough room to experiment, but not too much space, so it won't teach you bad habits like spacing out your buildings TOO much and wasting space in the process. It's also very safe, relatively speaking.

Really, it may not seem like much, and it is kind of in the middle of nowhere, but if you just need a place to set and forget some crafters, gatherers and researchers, this is a pretty good location. Easy to defend too. You may want to build a single entrance airlock gate system, one that opens out into the water. Add some watchtowers, harpoon turrets, you're solidly safe from basically everything in the game.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Roaming crabs, nothing else.

Special Note: As mentioned above, this zone will probably be labelled NONE for most of you, and is colloquially known as the 'Islands of None' and not 'Heng's Tail' as displayed in my screenshots.

Oh, also, I don't know why the water looks like milk here, it might just be on my computer, I really don't know.

2-L) Leviathan Coast

1)

Description: It has everything you need, and is at the very tip-top of the map. The hill is a bit crap to build on, but Outpost IIIs will work nicely, and there's still plenty of room around the foot of the mountain.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid


Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad.

Special Note: There's a circle of flat space near the top, on the opposite side, which isn't super useful, but it has aesthetic qualities and you could build a little fort up there.

2)

Description: Not to be confused with the location above, but it is almost in the same spot. It's over the other side of the hill, and shares a similar look and available space.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad.

Special Note: The flat area near the mountaintop is on your side of the hill now, so might be nice I guess.

3)

Description: Some flat next to a big piece of metal. Nothing special.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad.

4)

Description: A pretty aesthetically pleasing coastal section, jutting into the ocean. Nice for a little fishing village.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad.

Special Note: There's a tiny strip of land out in the water you could use to build a 'lighthouse' if you felt like.

5)

Description: A little bit of a messy spot, but hey it's near the coast, and there's plenty of room to build here as well as to the south. Most of the trash surrounding your base will disappear on reload anyway. There's some nice picturesque mountains, a bay, and an island nearby, so it's kind of pretty.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad. Proximity to Iron Trail might mean wandering Iron Spiders.

6)

Description: A decent space to build in, nice and flat. Could build up on the hill, but it is a bit of a shoddy hill.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid, however up on the hill it's 0% fertility

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad.

Special Note: If you are using the NWDM (New Weapons Dissemination Mod), the Leviathanslayers have a tower here, preventing you from using this location.

7)

Description: More nice flat terrain with some mines at the foot of the hill, you're kind of in the right angle of an L-shaped mountain, and the water nearby prevents it feeling too enclosed or blocked off. Unfortunately the mountain is all pathable, so it won't prevent enemies descending the mountain towards your little town. Feels cozy, though.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad.

Special Note: Take care expanding towards the nearby ruined settlement, it'll prevent you building. Other than that you have a massive amount of space to build the megacity of your dreams. You could also build up on top of the mountain, which is fairly flat, and gradually descend from there into the valley below, but take note of 0% fertility at the summit and no good resources up there either.

8)

Description: Nice and flat spot at the top of the world. Not much else to say. The trees are nice, but like most trees they'll disappear once you get building.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid, notably I was relatively easily able to fit like 10 iron drills and 8 copper drills, so this might make for a good production center!

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad.

Special Note: There's a sunken outpost nearby in the water which will prevent you expanding too far south, so watch out for that. Shouldn't be a huge problem though, given you have tons of building space north.

2-L) Leviathan Coast Pt. 2

9)

Description: A cozy little hill base, while the east side is pretty easy to wall off, the west side might be a little trickier to build walls on. Still, plenty of room to build whatever you like, a nice flat, plenty of ore you can notably keep inside your walls, more down the hill. Only thing to watch out for is difficulty of getting water with 20% up on the hill, 80% down below.

You can plant cotton, wheat and hemp near the chokepoint and on the flat part of the hill, you can only build a vegetable farm next to the chokepoint, and while cactus grows on the flat part, it's probably not worth building cactus in this biome at only ~40% crop yield. Hydroponics would simplify farming a bit.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 20% water up the hill, 80% water down the hill, complex fertility

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad.

Special Note: Walls in the screenshot above indicate the border from an outpost to the south which will prevent you building. Also means you can't build up on the hill behind you, unfortunately.

10)

Description: Copper here is a little further down the hill than most of the annoying half-mountain areas in Leviathan Coast, which means you can probably incorporate it more easily into your build. Terrain immediately nearby is uneven and hilly, but hey that might just make your base look all the more interesting. Iron is out in the field, so this could make a decent seaside mining town.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad. Right next to the Cannibal Plains border, so I saw plenty of roaming squads.

Special Note: You can build slightly south of here as well, there's another spot with copper & iron and so on with slightly more flat terrain, but it's practically identical to this one and it's significantly more difficult to get at the copper because it's embedded in the side of the mountain.

11)

Description: Not a bad spot. You have a nice little bowl to build into, the iron ore drills (center) can be moved over to the left side out of the way, and your back is against a cliff-face. Those are copper drills (modded) on the right, and are kind of fixed. The 'front' of your base really ought to face south, out into the Cannibal Plains which you are right on the border of, so this would make a neat little spot for 'Cannibal Hunter' roleplay. Plenty of space to build walls, defenses and airlock gates out front.

There was a giant tree in the way for me, but it'll disappear completely once you start building and reload your save.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad. Right next to the Cannibal Plains border, so I saw plenty of roaming squads.

12)

Description: All your resources can fit neatly into this little miniature valley. However, as you'll quickly find out, enemies and anyone who feels like can easily get into the valley by simply going over the hills surrounding it. They all easily can be walked over. So the walls in this screenshot above represent my recommendation for the space your ACTUAL town should go into, and you could simply run with resources external to your walls. Or simply build somewhere else.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 100% green 50% arid

Dangers: Cannibal raids, Beak Things, Leviathans if you make them mad. Right next to the Cannibal Plains border, but it might be a little too far to see cannibal squads.

Special Note: The mountain behind the 'resource valley' is rubbish. Don't even bother.

2-N) None Coast, Northern Coast

None Coast
1)

Description: Technically not part of the 'None Coast' but it doesn't fit anywhere else. This little patch of dirt in the middle of the ocean is amazingly picturesque, hence why I included it. It's one of the only islands in the game, and this one is possibly the furthest from land, giving you the most time to man the turrets when a Cannibal Raid comes along, if you even get them out here...

So, I assume due to the 'bug' of 'NONE' zones having absolutely nothing, no stone, no water, no iron, no copper, you have absolutely NO resources out here in vanilla Kenshi.

All of the problems with this place aside... if you were to mod in the capability to produce resources out of nothing, like some of the mods I'll suggest in the optional section at the bottom of this guide, you could theoretically turn this place into something. This would of course mean you could technically set up shop anywhere, not just here, but hey.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility, so even though 100% arid, nothing can grow here.

Dangers: Nothing. Probably the safest spot in the entire game.

2)

Description: So upfront there's no resources, this is hydroponics only AND you need the mods Deep Drill Mining & Moisture Farming Enhanced since there is just nothing here.

However, the location itself is fairly pretty, you can easily wall off the islet here, you'll easily see your enemies coming, and it's good and flat. Also, 20% of the island to the south here counts as Dreg but don't worry about that it doesn't help.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Cannibal raids, roaming cannibal squads, not much else.

3)

Description: If you wanna live some place where you have the novelty of clicking prospect and seeing NONE, this is the place for you!

Oh also there's really nothing here by the way. Get Deep Drill Mining, Moisture Farming and hydroponics or this place won't be very useful to you.

Resources: 0% everything

Dangers: Nothing. Boredom.

Northern Coast
1)

Description: Nice vertical range here, the hill is actually quite tall, and you can build down the hill and have some space down the bottom for crops if you so choose, or whatever. You're also on the coast, which is pretty, and this zone is not too dangerous. Solid spot.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 84-93% fertility

Dangers: Cannibals! Starving bandits! River raptors eating all your crops! Watch out!!!

2)

Description: If you want to live in trees, but you want some relatively flat terrain, but you also don't want TOO much water, and you also sort of want to live in the middle of nowhere, but not so much nowhere that the major factions don't want a slice of your pie, well, this is the place for you.

I think the Holy Nation will hit you up for prayer day, the cannibals will literally hit you up, the UC might swing around for taxes but they might not, and all the trees near your base will disappear into the aether once you reload your save. But hey, it might look good, it may look like you have a neat little clearing in the woods to yourself.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 20% water, ~85% fertility

Dangers: Prayer day, cannibals, river raptors, starving bandits maybe, possibly UC taxes

2-N) None Valley/None's Shield

None Valley/None's Shield

NOTE: While most locations within this guide are generally agreed upon, named by the wiki, or simply named by the game, THIS location has no official community name that I could find, so I'm calling it None Valley, or None's Shield, whichever proves to be more popular. I don't know.

It is so named because the zone designated within the game is simply 'NONE'. I append 'Valley' because it sits right above Iron Valley, or 'Shield' because it's in the exact same zone as Okran's Shield.

1)

Description: This location does not look like much, but surprisingly, despite being labelled NONE... it DOES tick all the boxes. You have copper on the left, iron on the right, and also stone on the right. You kind of have to put your water over near the Okran's Pride side of things, but hey, if you move too far east you'll go up against Okran's Shield's no-build zone, and you don't want that. You will want to get your water and plants from the Okran's Pride side of the area.

That said, you have a LOT of space to build here. The Okran's Shield no-build zone is very small, smaller than you'd expect, so it really will not be a problem. You have a VERY frequently traveled road right through the middle of your base, which might be useful for safety if the Holy Nation likes you - which you'd really hope they do given where you are basing. And while it doesn't feel like it, you are on a kind of plateau which you could relatively easily wall off!

You are also in a uniquely advantageous position where, you are close to EVERYTHING. World's End is a short walk north, Black Desert City is just to the south (though watch out the holy nation hates Sadneil & robot limbs), and Blister Hill is right next to you. You're surrounded by like four different zones, too, so if the text that comes up telling you what zone you're in annoys you maybe don't come here.

Also, you have acid rain on the lower half of your base, but hey, give all your sensitive little humans dustcoats or iron hats and they'll probably be fine. And you WILL need at least one human male to base here, because, again, Holy Nation!

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, ~60% water, 83% fertility

Dangers: Prayer day! Cannibal raids maybe? Dust bandit raids. Cloud ninjas??? Though, if you're lucky they'll come through the Iron Valleys and get absolutely obliterated by the, uh, 'fauna' there.

2-O) Obedience, Okran's Gulf

Obedience

Description: I don't even think it's worth setting up here honestly, 10% iron is a death sentence for any zone. I like to have around 400% iron production in my bases so I can churn out as much iron and steel and chainmail as possible, this place, you'd need 10 iron drills JUST to get a quarter of that.

I don't recommend anyone setting up here, unless you have mods that allow you greater than 10% iron efficiency, such as 'Deep Drill Mining' and some source of water like 'Moisture Farming'. In this case, I guess you could base here.

I'm not going to show screenshots of this zone.

Resources: 10% iron, 100% copper, 70% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Cannibal raids only? Iron spiders? Pretty safe, mostly.

Okran's Gulf
1)

Description: By no means the best spot I've ever seen, but not bad. You have a nice, interesting location inside a little flat pan you can use to build whatever you like. Right at the tip-top of Holy Nation territory, you've got access to Armour King, Flotsam is a short walk, same with World's End, and you're close to Mongrel, Blister Hill and Okran's Pride to steal food from if you're desperate.

You may note this is a stone black hole, so only 50% stone at best nearby, and only in the specific spot noted in the screenshot (top left).

Resources: 100% iron, 60-70-80% copper, 50% stone, 60% water, 100% arid 10% green

Dangers: Prayer day, cannibal raids still, fogmen squads from the nearby ruin, bonedogs, possibly dust bandit raids, basically on the edge of those.

Special Note: There's a space just 70 meters north of here right on the border with Floodlands you could build also, since it has all the resources you need, but since it's technically still part of Okran's Gulf, you will probably get prayer day, so you don't gain anything by moving your base up there.

2)

Description: This seems to me like a pretty safe, easy to get to, simple, resource-heavy location probably great for if you are just learning the ropes of Kenshi's base-building. Great newbie spot. You're right next to Blister Hill, couple military bases, and though you're near the Fog Islands, you shouldn't really be in any danger from them.

Flat land, and plenty of resources. Only thing to watch out for is your crops will be a bit sucky, but that's okay, just make a million chewsticks. Maybe some dustwiches. Your squad won't mind.

Resources: 100% iron, 80% copper, 80% stone, 60% water, 100% fertility, 100% arid, 10% green

Dangers: Dust bandits, maybe cannibals and prayer day.

3)

Description: I am putting this here because it ticks all the boxes, and it is kind of funny to be living a stone's throw from a fogmen party house. That's it.

If you feel compelled to live next to some fogmen, but you don't want to live in the Fog Islands for some reason, this is the place for you. Maybe if you were roleplaying AS fogmen? I don't know.

Resources: 100% iron, 80% copper, 40% stone, 60% water, 100% arid, 10% green

Dangers: I am sure you'll figure it out.

4)

Description: This spot is kinda pretty, the wall on the left indicates the no-build zone around Stack which is right nearby. You're on the edge of Okran's Pride, and a t-intersection road. Could be good for a nice little Holy Nation town. Not much good for anything else. You'd have to be a fool after all, to roleplay as an antagonist of the Holy Nation, but base between Stack and Bad Teeth.

Resources: 90-100% iron, 70-80% copper, 100% stone, 60% water, 100% fertility, 100% arid, 20% swamp, 10% green

Dangers: Prayer day, maybe dust bandit raids, maybe cannibal raids, starving bandits wandering in, escaped servants...

5)

Description: As you can see by the wall, it constrains your building quite a bit (circle of no-building from nearby holy mines). However, you have plenty of room actually by building out to the west, and this is the intersection of several different roads.

Like #3 this could make a neat little space for a Holy Nation affiliated town.

Resources: 90-100% iron, 80% copper, 100% stone, 60% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Prayer day, maybe dust bandit raids, maybe cannibal raids, starving bandits wandering in, escaped servants...

6)

Description: Not much to say about this spot, it's only a tiny bit north of Vain #1, but since this place will see prayer day and that one will not, it's worth singling out. This location is probably the most 'fertile' spot in Okran's Gulf, so if you desperately want to have some trees and stuff in your dustbowl, bit of a hill, and to live right next to a major city, this is the spot for you!

Resources: 70-80% iron, 70-80% copper, 50% stone (look east down the hill slightly near your iron), 60% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Prayer day, maybe dust bandit raids, maybe cannibal raids, starving bandits wandering in, escaped servants... and BEAK THINGS.

2-O) Okran's Gulf Pt. 2

7)

Description: Right on the edge of the Fog Islands, this spot is for only the most indecisive of gamers. You have a sort-of easily defensible base inside a sort-of cramped little bowl to build in, with kind-of pathable hills and pretty good resources. This is for those of you who are like "I want to have access to fogmen at all times, but I also really really like prayer day."

Because you're gonna get prayer day.

Not much else to say, you have room for some nice watchtowers. Could make a solid military outpost, if you don't wanna commit to a full base here.

Resources: 100% iron, 75% copper, 100% stone, 60% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Maybe the odd stray fogman squad, prayer day, dust bandit raids, cannibal raids!

8)

Description: Great spot for your first base if you are a new, newbie, noob or beginner base builder. Unless the Holy Nation hates you. You can just run to the nearby military base for safety, or Stack, or Bad Teeth, or whatever, but more importantly you have a TON of free space to build whatever you like wherever you want, and you won't be 'punished' for it, you have the room to build one of everything and I think that's the thing that makes a really good 'starter base' spot.

Other than that, it's pretty boring, pretty average. You have to get REALLY close to the nearby military base to hit its 'no-build' zone, so don't worry about it.

Resources: 100% iron, 80% copper, 50-80% stone, 60% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Boredom, starving bandit roamers, prayer day, dust bandit raids, cannibal raids...

Special Note: It was at about this point I started to think I should stop listing every single spot in Okran's Gulf, but whatever let's keep it going.

9)

Description: If #8 did not impress you, this one just might. Mostly because if you are very particular about keeping your annoying resource production facilities 'just so' and out of the way, you can put all of your ore generation against the wall here. So, if you want to make a very ordered little town, this spot might be good for that.

I have in the screenshot above 100% stone at the stone drill closest to the road, the one up against the cliff-face is 80%, but you may prefer it because it looks better. There's room for two up there as well.

The mines north will cut off your building, but it shouldn't be a problem if you just build towards the east or south.

Also, there is notably a LOT of ore to be had here, you could easily double stack your ore drills here and have 8 each.

Resources: 100% iron, 60-70% copper, 80-100% stone, 60% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Possibly stray fogmen? Starving bandits squads, cannibal raids, dust bandit raids... and, of course, prayer day.

10)

Description: Pretend you're a terrible crappy rust-belt mining town with two bars and nothing else, and suddenly this spot seems fun. Or I guess you could build a regular base here, because you have access to everything you could possibly need. You have 60% water on Okran's Gulf side of the road, and 100% water on the Okran's Pride side of the road.

I only ended up including this because I liked that your base will be built right on top of the main thoroughfare of the entire zone, so you'll probably get a lot of paladin patrols and stuff right through the middle of your base, which is nice thematically for your Holy Nation affiliated faction. Maybe they'll also help you slaughter any enemies that try to mess with you!

However, take note of the wall here in the above screenshot. The holy farm nearby will prevent you building past that point! Just build your structures south instead of north.

Resources: 100% iron, 70-80% copper, 100% stone, 60-100% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Starving bandits, prayer day, cannibal raids, dust bandit raids... oh, and watch out for swamp raptors.

11)

Description: If you really wanna build a base as close to the Phoenix as possible, here you go! If you see the wall on the left, that is the Blister Hill 'no-build' zone.

Resources: 100% iron, 60-70% copper, 80-90% stone, 60% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Starving bandits, prayer day, cannibal raids, dust bandit raids

2-O) Okran's Pride, Okran's Valley, The Outlands

Okran's Pride
1)

Description: I really don't know what to say about this spot, but I sort of like that you've got a rock curtain to huddle against. It's fine I guess. It's like the only spot in Okran's Pride that isn't total garbage. The copper sucks but you at least can get it. This location is also one of the most central Holy Nation spots in the game, because you are SURROUNDED by Holy Nation farms, outposts, patrols potentially, the only problem is you're very much off the beaten track here.

Is that a pro? Is it a con? You decide.

Resources: 90-100% iron, 15-20% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 80-94% fertility

Dangers: Dust bandit raids! Look out!!! Cannibal raids! Maybe? I would like to say they might not make it to you but they will. They always do.

Okran's Valley
1)

Description: I love this spot. It looks great, you have a ridiculous amount of space, maybe TOO much, you can make a real megacity here, you have access to iron, copper, stone, and although you can't grow anything here, you have access to water.

This is one of the best places to start building if you're aiming to roleplay as a Holy Nation satrapy or town. You're surrounded by holy farms, you're right down the road from Blister HIll, and this is one of two or maybe three major roads into the entire zone. The only other way to get in is via off-road travel.

However, this area has no fertility, so is for hydroponics only, I would advise beelining the technology or researching it before you settle here! Before you stop reading, another option would be to build your OWN holy farm(s) in Okran's Pride, and haul food up here in the interim! Then you'd have a real supply-chain to take care of!

Resources: 100% iron, 60% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Prayer day, possibly cannibal raids, possibly dust bandit raids.

Special Note: This is probably a REALLY bad place to have skeletons or robotic limbs, because you will likely get patrols through your town or nearby regularly!

The Outlands
1)

Description: A decent enough spot. I like the uh... you'll see. If you come check out this spot yourself, you'll see there's some interesting doodads nearby, some interesting landscape features. Honestly, an aesthetically pleasing spot, where you can get all your resources.

You may have some trouble with sort of being in the middle, almost, of like several different weirdo south-easterly groups that all want to fight each other, but hey, at least you're near Black Scratch and some other towns, surprisingly close to civilization despite being near the edge of the map.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 60% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Reavers, black dogs, grass pirates, scavengers.

2)

Description: This hill doesn't look like much, but it's pretty cool. It really is just the platonic ideal of a hill, you have 360 degrees of clear vision in every direction, it's nice and tall, and you could make a probably really cool tiered ringed city or something of that nature. The copper here is a little further down the hill, but that might even be preferable, and you have several sources of it, same with iron, so you can get creative with drill placement.

Highly recommended you check this one out if you want a 'hill' base. You could even maybe build a fortified castle keep at the top.

Resources: 100% iron, 50-60% copper, 100% stone, 35-60% water, 87-90% fertility

Dangers: Reavers, black dogs, grass pirates, scavengers.

3)

Description: Just kind of a nice, squared-off base location. You could build a nice fort, and you have kind of a natural moat. The resources here are spread out a bit and copper is a bit scarce, there's one node off in the distance, the furthest drill, but hey, that just means it won't annoy you while building.

Resources: 100% iron, 80% copper, 100% stone, 60% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Reavers, black dogs, grass pirates, scavengers.

2-P) Purple Sands, The Pits, The Pits East

Purple Sands
1)

Description: Another spot where you require mods to do anything. You need Deep Drill Mining, Moisture Farming Enhanced, and hydroponics!

However, your reward for setting up here is an honestly fairly chill location in my experience, there's not too many enemies, mostly small numbers of cannibals, shrieking bandits, and some beak things. You've got flat terrain, and a nice, desolate zone that feels stark in a pleasant way. I like it.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Cannibals, shrieking bandits, and some beak things. Cannibal raids also.

The Pits

NOTE: There's nothing here because after a thorough survey of The Pits I simply found nothing interesting or worthwhile to settle. The Pits East is more interesting and has better landscapes, and does everything better. If you want flat terrain there are much better areas elsewhere, and if you want hilltop or mountaintop bases, there are definitely better options, but you are welcome to check this zone yourself.

The Pits East

1)

Description: Not the best screenshot, but in my defense it's pretty tough to get a good one of this spot. Anyway! Kind of a unique setup, because up on the cliff to the right you have rich copper, but in the valley is your iron and stone and really where all your buildings should be going. You can maybe put a watchtower or two up on the hills surrounding and whatever walls you feel you need.

Oh yeah, that rain by the way? Acid. Oh also this is one of the most dangerous zones in the game. But hey! Cool terrain! Also hydroponics only. The nearby 'Outpost' will prevent you building too far north too. It shouldn't be a problem, just keep it in mind.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, ~70% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Crabs, crab raiders, gurglers... and more.

2)

Description: If I were to rank locations, this one would receive an SSS+ rank. It ticks EVERY box with smokin' sick style, it's nuts. The little bowl here is probably enough room for you to build everything you need, if it isn't you can just build down the hill, all the resources here are CRAZY rich, so much so you have a LOT of flexibility in where you put your drills etc, the above is just where I put mine as a suggestion.

It may not look like much here, but this spot is unbelievably good, and I strongly recommend you check it out if you've got a fairly strong squad to survive the dangers here. As a fun bonus, it seems to me fairly unlikely that any other faction could really survive even reaching your base here, if they choose to raid you, and on top of that you're at the bottom corner of the map, so they can only approach you from one direction, really.

Needs hydroponics - but you have that unlocked already don't you? If you don't, stop looking at this zone altogether, you aren't ready.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 90% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Crabs, crab raiders, gurglers... and more.

3)

Description: Sorta like #2 this location is very very good. Everything you need, a nice view, and you have WAY more space than you could need to build the megabase you desire. The only thing I don't like about this spot is you're right in the middle of the zone, so probably prone to attract more attention (which might be a good thing for some people), and enemies won't have to navigate through quite as much of The Pits East to reach you, if you're hoping for the zone to take care of raiders for you.

Hydroponics! Get you some.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Crabs, crab raiders, gurglers... and more.

2-R) Raptor Island, Rebirth, Royal Valley

Raptor Island
1)

Description: Even though there is no copper to be found here, I have to mention Raptor Island. It's one of the only true island locales in the entire game, maybe the only really viable one. You can't go too far west down the island, since as indicated in the image via a wall, there's a radius around a ruin that you can't build into, which is where most of the iron unfortunately is.

So you're limited to either the western end, which has no iron, or the eastern side, which has iron.

Resources: 100% iron, 0% copper, 100% stone, 50% water, 100% arid 10% green

Dangers: Raptors will eat your crops if you grow em outside. Cannibal raids might charge across the strait to get to you, but... well. You probably don't even NEED walls to deal with them! Just put up some turrets and man them when they approach.

Rebirth

Description: The couple of spots in the 'Rebirth' zone you can even build have either no resources, or resources so poor it's just not worth it. However! I did find ONE location very much worthy of 'aesthetics' over everything else.

This is the be-all end-all of mountaintop bases, I think. I don't know of any other pathable terrain in Kenshi as high altitude as this. At a peak of 4,578 meters, this mountaintop is slightly above half as tall as our Mount Everest. You have a fair amount of space to drop your buildings. You could fit several stationhouses and L-houses easily, not to mention watchtowers, which would be quite efficient for space in this spot.

Amazing place for a ninja hideout or monk temple. Just watch out for the inevitable prayer day.

However, unless you are using mods to generate resources in places where ordinarily there are none like Deep Drill Mining and Moisture Farming Enhanced, logistically moving resources up to this place will be a living nightmare, since you can't make food or anything else.

Resources: 10% iron on two nodes, 10% copper on one node, no drills work here for some reason, 0% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Prayer day... maybe cannibal raid. idk

Royal Valley
1)

Description: Check it out! Super secret base! No resources here at all though, oops.

Honestly I don't even know if you have enough room to build a full base here, really, but it is SUPER SECRET and that in itself is kind of neat. You may even have trouble figuring out how to get up here, let alone that you can get up here, because to do so involves walking through some cliff rock doodads.

Deep Drill Mining, Moisture Farming Enhanced and hydroponics recommended. Though, honestly you barely have the room to build anything here, so don't get too ambitious.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 50% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Southern Hive? I don't even know if anything else can find you up here.

2-S) Shem

Shem

Note: Shem is one of those zones where resources are so abundant that honestly you could set down roots almost anywhere, I'm only going to put down the most interesting or notable spots.

1)

Description: Barely a Shem base location really, but it counts as Shem and it isn't technically Venge. It is right on the border, and your first few days might spook you, but you SHOULD be safe here as long as you don't venture down the hill.

Anyway, well-worth mentioning just because this location is kind of bizarre-looking. You not only have a LOT of space, you have a visible road you can build your base around, and the plateau here can pretty easily be walled off entirely if you like. I don't know how many travelers you'll see coming through here, but I did see some Twinblades using the road.

You'll probably need Moisture Farming Enhanced to deal with the bad water here, and hydroponics too in order to grow anything, so watch out for that!

Resources: 60-70% iron, 60-70% copper, 90-100% stone, 10% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: BEAK THINGS! Band of bones, dust bandit raids, starving bandits, blood spiders.

2)

Description: Nothing special, just a neat little sloping canyon. It's pretty close to Shem #1, but I figure I may as well list this separately since they are very different vibes, and this spot would probably not make a good extension onto the above base location.

Similar to #1 you're gonna need hydroponics and probably Moisture Farming Enhanced also.

Resources: 100% iron, 80% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Beak things? Band of bones, dust bandit raids, starving bandits, blood spiders.

3)

Description: So this spot, it's pretty good. Some room to build, some nice oasis-type waterholes. The main annoying thing about Shem is trying to figure out how to wall off all your stuff and make it look nice. If I were you, I'd probably draw a wall right around the trio of waterholes here, and just have one gate facing south.

Shem is a prime location for water gate cheese, and you could do that here, and it would be useful, but this is not the right guide to explain how to do that. Essentially put your base entrance at one end of a water 'corridor' formed with your own walls, in order to force enemies to swim toward you and give you time to pincushion them with crossbows.

Resources: 100% iron, 60-70% copper, 100% stone, ~60-70% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Beak things. Band of bones, dust bandit raids, starving bandits, blood spiders.

4)

Description: I think this spot is where I built my first ever base. I did a bit of research beforehand, heard Shem had good resources and such, so I figured hey! How bad could it be? Well, it was pretty bad. I lost tons of characters and while eventually I flourished it was a pretty miserable, intensely stressful experience. It was stuff like that - not really having any guidance whatsoever on where to build - that prompted me to make this guide in the first place.

Anyway, I note down this location because it's not too bad. You could really set up almost anywhere in Shem if you really want, there's resources everywhere, but here you got everything you need, you got water and fertility, and you're not too close to the nearby Settled Nomads, who in my experience, never survive for very long.

Resources: 100% iron, 80% copper, 100% stone, 60-70% water 100% fertility

Dangers: Beak things. Band of bones, dust bandit raids, starving bandits, blood spiders.

2-S) Shun

Shun
1)

Description: It's like a couple other spots I've listed in this guide where it's huge and flat and you have TONS of space to build and be creative - but there's terrible resources here. Deep Drill Mining, get it. Watch out for the annoying 'NONE' zone preventing you growing crops, move north if needed.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 100% stone, ~70% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Skin spiders, gorillos, band of bones.

2)

Description: Because apparently the entirety of the south-west corner of the map just SUCKS (this post made by south-east corner of the map gang) for base-building, this location has bad minerals, so you will probably want to install Deep Drill Mining so you can just put your drills down.

Anyway that aside, this naturally-moated hill with included valley for farming is spectacular. It is a bit cramped, but you can fit all your buildings here if you really try. One thing I really like is you can't path up the hill except from the inside, so you can wall off just this little area and let the cliff keep people out.

I recommend ignoring the nearby crappy and annoying to reach copper and just putting deep drills in the valley below, and your buildings on the hill.

Resources: 0% iron, ~40-60% copper, ~40% stone, 70% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Skin spiders, gorillos, band of bones.

3)

Description: A kind of magical place. The edges of the world have a kind of serene, poignant quality to them, and this one is no exception. The resources here are actually pretty good for Shun, but that's not what it's about. I wouldn't recommend building a full base here, this is the sort of location you build one outpost on, perhaps an Outpost Citadel or Outpost III or maybe even a Watchtower, and you use it to inter your hallowed dead.

This hill faces almost dead on where the the sun sets, which I think is kind of... appropriate. It'd also make a good final resting place for a skeleton lord, or lords. Have him shift+click sit in a chair atop a watchtower, forever.

Resources: ~90% iron, 75% copper, 100% stone, 10-70% water (at the beach), 0-100% fertility (at the beach)

Dangers: Skin spiders, gorillos, band of bones.

2-S) Sinkuun

Sinkuun
1)

Description: For when you want to say you live in Sinkuun but only just a lil bit. I think you are just inside the Holy Nation influence radius, so you may actually get prayer day on the absolute edge of their empire. Nothing much special about this spot, and the cliff behind your copper here is pathable so have fun walling all this off.

Still, you can get 100% arid and 100% green here thanks to being next to Northern Coast biome. So that's cool.

Resources: 100% iron, 50-60% copper, 100% stone, 60-80% water, 90-93% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmer squads, possibly stray cannibals?

2)

Description: You can't go too far north cuz of the nearby outpost, so watch out for that.

I'm only listing this location out of pity for the zone, but Sinkuun sucks (sorry to anyone who loves Sinkuun). It's fine. It's kind of flat and it might be a pain to wall off. But IT DOES have SOME value. You can roleplay, for all you Cannibal Hunters out there, as a Cannibal Hunters outpost or town.

Resources: 90% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, 80% fertility

Dangers: Skimmers, rebel farmers, other just random semi-hostile squads.

2-S) Skimsands

Skimsands

NOTE: There's nothing here because I looked over the entire zone and while there were a couple spots were you COULD start a base if you really want, they were still kind of crappy, too close to NPC settlements, or they annoyed me too much. This whole zone is covered with gross-looking sinkholes that will frustrate you while you try to build, especially walls, so I wouldn't recommend basing here at all.

2-S) Skinner's Roam

Skinner's Roam
1)

Description: You have less space here than you might think thanks to no-build zones to your north and south. Bad Teeth will prevent you building too close, and the nearby Holy Farm will stop you building down the hill. Not much of a problem though.

This is one of the main roads through Okran's Pride, I don't know how many patrols stroll through here, but you should see a couple. Since you're also positioning Bad Teeth here between you and the dust bandits, who knows? You might get lucky, they might decide to approach you by walking through the city, and get decimated before they even reach you.

Resources: 100% iron, 15-20% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 86% fertility

Dangers: Prayer day, dust bandits, and you should just BARELY be inside the radius for cannibal raids, but who knows, maybe you won't see em.

2)

Description: Eh it's a spot where you can build your base whatever I have nothing to say about it. Should it be even included in this guide? Well, I may as well be as exhaustive as possible and at least point it out to save you the effort, since it has all the resources you need.

Resources: 100% iron, 50-60% copper, 80-100% stone, 50% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: LOTS of starving bandits, they travel in like double size packs here. Dust bandit raids?

3)

Description: I do have something to say about this place. It's a neat little oasis, what's not to like? Well, the resources are annoying to extract, because the iron as you can see is up on the hillside, and the stone is like underneath all that random rock trash next to the iron. The best I managed was 40% and 40%, two drills for 40% stone. Similarly, you could get more iron if somehow you could place the drills closer to the source, but ~75% was best I could do for my drills.

Resources: 75% iron, 50-60% copper, ~30-40% stone, 60% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Dust bandit raids, prayer day. Starving bandit hordes.

4)

Description: I was on the fence about this spot since you are VERY close to Narko's Trap's no-build zone, but I put up some walls, and I ended up including this one because you DO have enough room to build all your stuff, and if you only have one gate and point it at the gap in the cliff here, you could have a ridiculously rock-solid defense.

The resources aren't great though.

Resources: 70-80% iron, ~40% copper, 50-60% stone, 60% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Dust bandit raids, prayer day. Starving bandit hordes.

5)

Description: This is three roads meeting. It is at least marginally interesting for the fact that you could make a small city here to service the needs of travelers, or something like that. I don't even know how many people you'd get down these roads but hey, why not right?

Resources: 100% iron, 60% copper, 100% stone, ~40-45% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Dust bandits, starving bandits, black dragon ninjas I dunno.

6)

Description: This basin is kind of nice. Not much else to say. I'm only including it because if you're going to settle somewhere in this boring zone, it should be here and not just some random other spot.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, ~40% stone, ~33% water, 88% fertility

Dangers: Starving bandit hordes, dust bandit raids, prayer day.

7)

Description: This spot is a nice compromise between a nice looking zone, and Deadlands. This little spot has kind of a unique look to it, it's kinda flat, and it has all the resources you need, so worth building a base here. Why not, right?

Resources: 100% iron, 80% copper, 100% stone, 60% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Starving bandit hordes, dust bandit raids, possibly prayer day, maybe iron spiders?

2-S) Sniper Valley, Sonorous Dark, Sonorous Junk Reef

Sniper Valley
1)

Description: Not much to say. This zone has surprisingly good resources. Could make a decent spot for an outpost before the Ashlands and other zones, a nice rest stop in the middle of the most dangerous corner of the map. Probably not worth doing a FULL self-sufficient base here, and for the love of Stobe I highly recommend if this base is going to have a permanent crew assigned to keep the lights on, you should probably ensure they are all skeletons. Just... trust me.

Make sure you got hydroponics if you wanna make food here!

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 40% stone, 60% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: You'll figure it out.

Sonorous Dark

NOTE: This area has very plentiful resources, so if you don't like the location below you could find your own unique individual location to build without too much effort, especially since the area is so small. I'm not making an entry for every grid reference in the zone.

1)

Description: One of the most ominous zones in the game, but WOW those resources. This is a nice little bowl, too, sandwiched between cliffs, with a nice view and plenty of room to build. What more could you ask for? Fertile terrain, probably - which this location does not have. Hydroponics time!

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: If you are crazy enough to base here, you don't need me to tell you what to be afraid of.

Sonorous Junk Reef
1)

Description: Do you like knee-deep water and nothingness? Well, have I the 'zone' for you!

Technically this area counts as NONE but the wiki has a specific entry for this place, and I figured hey, you know, if I'm already recommending players use mods like Deep Drill Mining and Moisture Farming Enhanced, why not mention this spot?

One neat thing about this one is, obviously it's a pain in the ass in general but your enemies, if they ever try and approach your base, well. How far do you think they're going to get, when they're forced to move at walk speed, towards your harpoons and crossbows?

Resources: 0% everything

Dangers: Nada.

2-S) South Wetlands

South Wetlands
1)

Description: Half of this location counted as 'The Swamp' when I took my prospect screenshots but I DON'T CARE, if you look at the map it is just that zone being greedy. This is a South Wetlands location and don't let anyone tell you different!

Anyway, the place itself is actually quite nice, it's sort of like a hidden cove right next to the... Swamp Ninja HQ. Oops. Fortunately unless you try to build REALLY far north, you should have more than enough room here around the cove to build whatever you like.

Walling here might be annoying, and the stone sucks, but overall I'm into it. Perfect base for your own kinda ninja faction hideout. Maybe you shouldn't even build walls at all, it might ruin the picturesque quality of this swampy base.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 40-50% stone,

Dangers: Swamp Ninjas (are you surprised?), Red Sabres, river raptors

2)

Description: So this spot is mostly just worth mentioning since it's on a cool island, but more than that, it's also very near two other islands you could connect to make one long sort of connected island chain.

Unfortunately, no minerals here, so you have two choices, first is to use this location as a food production base only and then transport it elsewhere, which is something you really only want to consider if you're doing some hardcore roleplay. The second choice is to just use Deep Drill Mining, as in the above screenshot.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 100% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Swamp Ninjas, Red Sabres, Blood Spiders, UC events, river raptors

3)

Description: Another island! This one has a slightly annoying nearby ruin that will cut off a sliver of the island, on the western side. However, I kind of like how flat it is, how large it is, and how ordered you can make your drills - because like South Wetlands #2 there are no minerals here to be had. Similar to that location you could use this spot as a food/hemp production facility, and then ship it all elsewhere for processing, but supply chains are pretty much for only the most hardcore of Kenshi roleplayers.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 100% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Swamp Ninjas, Red Sabres, Blood Spiders, UC events, river raptors

4)

Description: Continuing a trend in South Wetlands, this spot has crap resources! Utter trash! Except fertility! However, this spot would make an EXCELLENT spot for like a faction headquarters, or even just some kind of military outpost. Or just anyone who wants a hilly or mountainous base. You don't have a lot of room on top, and the hill itself is kind of crap to build on, but as you will see below, I managed to make a cool, Bastion-looking fortress atop the hill in like thirty seconds. Also, the water on top sucks, but if you go slightly down the hill you can easily hit 100% without going too far.



You'll want mods though, Slopeless and Deep Drill Mining probably. Also, if you're wondering why I can build a giant 'outpost citadel' that's thanks to Forgotten Buildings.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 10-100% water, 98% fertility

Dangers: Swamp Ninjas, Red Sabres, Blood Spiders, UC events, river raptors

5)

Description: Once again Deep Drill Mining for minerals. This hill base is just kind of neat, it's right next to a road which is nice, and you have tons and tons of room. You have a couple of plateaus to put watchtowers on or whatever you'd like, you have lower altitude terrain which gets quality water, and you should have plenty of room to build all the drills and stuff you need. Not much to say, but definitely worth mentioning and checking out.

Just for the record there IS some iron and some stone nearby but it sucks so bad I would honestly just pick up Deep Drill Mining anyway. The actual percentages don't sound so bad but you need to be in a very specific spot, so you're only getting 40% from like one drill.

Resources: ~40% iron, 90% copper, ~50% stone, 100% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Swamp Ninjas, Red Sabres, Blood Spiders, UC events, river raptors

6)

Description: x6 Combo! Once again, the resources here are trash, this time even the water sucks since the altitude is so high, HOWEVER, I could not avoid mentioning this spectacular location. It's so peculiar and unique looking it feels like a bug of some kind, this entire plateau is completely flat, it overlooks a nearby winding river, and it's sorta up kind of high enough you can see fog and such hovering atop nearby landscapes.

You need Deep Drill Mining and Moisture Farming Enhanced so you can get all the minerals you need, and so you can actually get water. You could also build sort of down the hill to your east but you might just not want to do that, given how large your base already is going to be if you choose to build here. Wells outside your walls might not be a crippling problem, it's up to you to decide. You have a TON of space, so maybe you could just build like 40 wells. Whatever works for you!

If you need the space to build a GIGANTIC, neatly ordered megacity, here you go.

Also note the nearby wall is an indicator of Clownsteady's 'no-build' zone. It is RIGHT on the edge of the plateau here so don't worry about it too much! It won't trouble you.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 50% stone, 10% water, 77-100% fertility

Dangers: Swamp Ninjas, Red Sabres, Blood Spiders, UC events, river raptors, beak things maybe?

2-S) Spider Plains

Spider Plains

NOTE: After surveying the Spider Plains I came to the realization that the vast majority of this zone is extremely flat plateaus and indeed 'plains' that would be extremely pleasant to build on. The resources, however, often were insufficient for them to make the list. Below I just noted down the most interesting spots I found.

If you are a mod user (Deep Drill Mining mostly), and you want a nice, flat, extremely wide open space to build a megacity in, you should have a look around this zone yourself!

1)

Description: I decided to add this as Spider Plains and not Shun, because firstly only the southern tip of the valley here counts as Shun, and secondly the valley itself looks like a nasty green spider egg on the map.

Anyway, that aside I mostly only put this here because, it's hard to quite get a good screenshot of it, but this location has a kind of unique look, it's right in the basin of a valley surrounded by very, very tall mountains, and hey it's nice and flat, and while you need mods really to take advantage of the location, it's kind of neat. Worth looking at.

Resources: 0% iron, ~60% copper, 100% stone, 60% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Skin Spiders, Kral's Chosen, berserkers, bonedogs, band of bones. You'll also get Shek faction events here, tithes etc.

2)

Description: Don't use prospect here it will LIE to you. In fact, it will lie to you so hard it will claim this spot is part of The Grid. I don't think this zone matches anyone's picture of what The Grid looks like so I figured I'd put it here, where is SHOULD be.

Anyway, there's not much to say. This spot sucks for resources but when it comes to appearance I though it looked good, and unique in its own way. You'll probably need to wall off the west, north and east edges of the crater here, but the south should be pretty safe since the cliff face isn't pathable.

There's more resources on the hillside outside of the crater, but if you wanna keep everything contained within the crater, you'll need mods, Deep Drill Mining, Moisture Farming Enhanced as well as hydroponics.

Resources: ~40% iron, ~90% copper, 0% stone, ~60% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Skin spiders, bonedogs, band of bones, berserkers, Kral's chosen? Also stone rat raids. You should narrowly avoid Shek tithes etc.

3)

Description: If you want to pretend you live on the NONE coast while secretly having access to all the resources you need without mods in vanilla Kenshi, here you go! This is the place for you.

I'm not sure why you'd want to do that but hey.

Other benefits include being RIGHT above Arach and yet fairly isolated from danger. You also get to avoid Shek tithes.

Resources: 90% iron, ~50% copper, 50% stone, 60% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Skin spiders?

4)

Description: The wall on the left is the no-build zone generated by a nearby NPC settlement.

This tiered, ringed hilltop is great, it'd make a great spot for either a military outpost, or just a heavily-fortified base with shifting verticality. It's pretty cool! You're right near some Shek military outpost, which ought to make this a great place to settle for any Shek-focused player faction.

Watch out, cuz you can only get iron from a nearby mountain. You may just want to use Deep Drill Mining but up to you!

Resources: 0% iron, 50-60% copper, 70% stone, 24-50% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: Skin Spiders, Kral's Chosen, berserkers, bonedogs, band of bones. You'll also get Shek faction events here, tithes etc.

2-S) Spine Canyon, Stenn Desert

Spine Canyon
1)

Description: Well worth a mention thanks to the unique location. This is an elongated U which only has one entryway, and while it's fairly cramped, you have two different iron nodes to choose from, and you can probably fit everything you need if you try. For the true sausage-shaped base connoisseur.

Interesting location for factions too. If you settle here, you should see Trader's Guild events, UC events, prayer day, but just narrowly avoid dust bandit raids as well as cannibals. So, if you want every major faction in the game to harass you constantly, build your settlement here!

Also, water is bad here, but the fertility is decent, so long as you like arid crops. Maybe pick up Moisture Farming Enhanced and use hydroponics.

Resources: 90% iron, 50-60% copper, 60% stone, 10-15% water, ~80% fertility

Dangers: Rebel farmers, possibly manhunter squads, roaming skimmers, city heroes...

2)

Description: Well, you may want Moisture Farming Enhanced and possibly hydroponics to round out your crop rotation, but hey this spot's not too bad. There's a nice little cliff in back you can put a watchtower or whatever on. It also faces out onto the desert, and at least for me I didn't see too many annoying dust particles flying across the screen.

If you liked Spine Canyon #1, but you REALLY hate prayer day, you might like this location.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, ~78% fertility

Dangers: UC & Trader's Guild events, skimmers, possibly manhunter squads wandering over, city heroes also.

Stenn Desert
1)

Description: If you want to be very boring, you could settle here and enjoy access to 'okay' amounts of all the resources you want. It's a neat little dustbowl with EXTREMELY annoying particle effects. Not much to say, but you can settle here I guess. I'll put it here though since it's kind of amazing how dull it is.

It is also the only location in the entire Stenn Desert I found that wasn't covered by no-build zones from Admag or other Shek towns, or just so terrible and awful you would never want to build there even if the location in question had resources.

Resources: 100% iron, 70% copper, 100% stone, 30% water, ~90% fertility

Dangers: Bonedogs, berserkers, skin spiders.

2-S) Stobe's Gamble, Stobe's Garden

Stobe's Gamble
1)

Description: Welp, it's not much, but it's home. Or it can be your home, if you really want to settle here in Stobe's Gamble. As you can see, you can get all you need except fertility, so hydroponics only!

Watch out for the settlement nearby, no-build zone, so try not to build TOO far east. It's not a huge problem, just a minor warning.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 70% stone, 60% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Gorillos, landbats, Southern Hive... and more besides.

2)

Description: You're gonna need Deep Drill Mining to get copper and stone, and Moisture Farming Enhanced for water, but once you do that little thing you've got the potential for a self-sufficient volcano base! You should have a bit more space than it actually looks because once you start building, save and reload, the crappy rocks and trees in your way should disappear, which will help. This is not really the best location I ever saw, but the novelty of building inside a volcano is worth a mention.

Resources: 100% iron, 0% copper, 0% stone, 0% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Gorillos, landbats, Southern Hive... and more besides.




Description: Well worth checking out if the idea of being surrounded by an acid lake seems cool to you. It is more than that though, the island here sort of looks like an artificial island, so it would make a nice little base I think. This location lacks stone, but I don't think stone is a terrible critical resource and you can double up on drills or more and be fine anyway.

Oh yeah you need hydroponics.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 20-30% stone, 60% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Gorillos, landbats, Southern Hive... and more besides.

Stobe's Garden
1)

Description: The imperious god-emperor of mountain-top bases.

The amount of 'space' here that you command is kind of absurd, if you actually look around and follow the cliff all the way around. There's even some flat back there! Sure, much of this location is sloped or cramped or what have you, and the water sucks so you'll probably want Moisture Farming Enhanced, but I don't know if any other mountain base really can compare to the majesty this place inspires.

There is only ONE way up here, and it is crazy difficult to assault thanks to the ramp that forces enemies to bunch up and cluster into the chokepoint. Heck, you even have room for MULTIPLE GATES.

Bonus points if you're using Forgotten Buildings and construct an Outpost Citadel on top of the mountaintop pinnacle just to dab on the nearby Reavers.

Resources: 100% iron, 70-80% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, 0-75% fertility

Dangers: If you have a mid to lategame squad, which you should have if you're even THINKING of basing here, you'll be okay.

2-S) Stormgap Coast

Stormgap Coast
1)

Description: You've got a couple villages nearby, one in particular very close. It is close enough it'll bother your building with its 'no-build zone' indicated in the above screenshot via a wall. As you can see, it should not be a significant problem, since you should have more than enough room in the dustbowl here to build your base. This is an annoying stone black-hole, so there's not much to be had here.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 50-70% stone, 60-80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Grass pirates, scavengers, rebel farmers, bonedogs, beak things, black dogs, slaver caravans, noble hunters.

2)

Description: A neat spot, because you can roleplay your fantasy of being the Gatekeeper. You can be the guy, the faction, that divides the rest of the world from the iron spider menace of Forbidden Isle. You can be the grizzled veteran who loses dozens of recruits a week to the evil spider onslaught. Do you get what I'm laying down here? Oh whatever.

Anyway you can build here and you got the resources to do it.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Iron spiders, maybe, I don't even know. UC events? Also grass pirates, scavengers, rebel farmers, bonedogs, beak things, black dogs, slaver caravans, noble hunters.

3)

Description: If you've been scrolling through this guide and you are SICK of hearing the words 'flat' and 'easy to build' then I have the location for you! It's a hill, that's kind of like Hidden Forest in a way. It's annoying and tricky to build on, you could probably safely wall it off though, and you do have your resources here.

I think once you get rid of some of the trees here (via save/reload) you'll find there's some decently flat terrain here.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, ~80% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Grass pirates, scavengers, rebel farmers, bonedogs, beak things, black dogs, slaver caravans, noble hunters.

4)

Description: It's like Stormgap Coast #3, except this time even flatter. It's flatter! Not much else to say. Oh, also the water is worse here. You're closer to a town, it's right next to you almost, but as long as you don't build TOO far west (you have a fair amount of space all the same) you should be alright.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 20-60% water, 83-93% fertility

Dangers: Grass pirates, scavengers, rebel farmers, bonedogs, beak things, black dogs, slaver caravans, noble hunters.

5)

Description: It pissed me off this location is right in the middle of a grid reference so I just broke my rules and took a weird screenshot of it.

Anyway, this location is a GREAT spot for a hill base! However, it has no fertility up on the hill, but it does on the valleys below. The problem here is that, unless you want to make a truly gigantic megabase and build out to the west or north, the area east, directly down the sheer cliff, is probably the closest spot to place your wells and farms.

This might be fun thematically if you want to make a heavily defended keep and castle at the top of the hill, and have poorly defended farms and such outside the walls. Alternatively, pick up hydroponics, and possibly Moisture Farming Enhanced given you're getting bad water at the top of the hill.

Resources: 100% iron, 50% copper, 100% stone, 20% water, 0-75% fertility

Dangers: Grass pirates, scavengers, rebel farmers, bonedogs, beak things, black dogs, slaver caravans, noble hunters.

2-S) The Shrieking Forest

The Shrieking Forest

1)

Description: To be honest I mostly added this one because I wanted to add at least ONE spot in The Shrieking Forest, given it has pretty good resources overall except copper. This spot I figure, hey, it's not TOO bad, it has all you need, the copper sucks, but it sucks everywhere in this zone.

Resources: 100% iron, 15-20% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 100% green

Dangers: Shrieking bandits, cannibal raids? Not too bad honestly.

2)

Description: Now THIS spot really impressed me. It's set into a neat little valley, with only one side of it open! You have a surprising amount of space, but not too MUCH space. You can keep all your ore on the left side, and stone on the far right, meaning everything else is free for development. Additionally, all the annoying ass trees will disappear on reload, or most of them anyway, leaving you for the most part with a pretty nice little area. You only need to make one wall, and while it's kind of a long one, you should have enough space, wherever you choose to build it, to make your cool airlock system.

The only downside is, the copper sucks, at 15-20%, but you can offset this with just a bunch of drills. If you don't have drills or the copper drills mod, this zone might not be for you.

Resources: 100% iron, 15-20% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, 100% green

Dangers: Shrieking bandits, cannibal raids...?

Special Note: You're reasonably close to Mongrel, which has a ton of shops. Perfect for offloading stuff you make, so this probably makes a good mid-lategame base. Also, below is an example of what the area will look like with most of the trees cleared.

3)

Description: Contender for ugliest spot to build your base in the entire game, but hey, all the resources here are GREAT... except for fertility. You'll therefore need hydroponics to build here, but it's worth mentioning because this place still has 100% water. In the small valley on the right, you get ~80% copper per drill, though you cannot even access the ore node without drills, so for you folks without mods, don't even bother with this spot.

Efficient, but ugly.

Resources: 100% iron, 80% copper, 100% stone, 100% water, no fertility

Dangers: Shrieking bandits? Cannibals? Maybe iron spiders from Obedience/Floodlands...? Hating yourself for choosing to settle here?

Special Note: I wouldn't ever base here, but you CAN set up some decent chokepoints at least in the 'copper valley' you can see in the screenshot and up at the entrance to The Shrieking Forest.

2-S) The Swamp

The Swamp

NOTE: The Swamp suffers from severe frame rate issues, more so than maybe any other area in Kenshi, it suffers from near-constant loading pauses, and the amount of foliage is extremely frustrating to build around. So I would strongly advise against settling here. Consider looking over the South Wetlands locations listed in this guide.

Here are some Swamp locations anyway.

1)

Description: Not too bad. You have some room here to build, you can build along the mountains to the west a bit or into the swamp to the east, or maybe even a little bit north. It's not great, but if you REALLY want to base in the swamp, well, here you go, there aren't too many trees or clutter nearby.

Resources: ~90% iron, ~90% copper, ~40-50% stone, 100% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Blood spiders, various ninja factions, river raptors eating your crops, dust bandits, stone rats

2)

Description: This spot has some problems, but it was worth a mention for a couple reasons. Firstly, it is actually in the swamp and I needed more swamp locations for this guide, secondly, you can actually kind of pretend you're a swamper if you settle here. Thirdly, this location is not a bad candidate for like... building into the swamp, maybe not even HAVING walls, and just chaining structures together to make an impassable wall, the above image is an example of me doing just that. I also made one of those wall tunnels to ensure enemies swim toward you like fish in a barrel. You could separate the buildings a little more and put walls between them but that's the kind of tedious work I usually cannot be bothered with...

Anyway, yeah the resources are okay, but you will have trouble fitting all your drills here, you will probably need Slopeless or similar to allow you to build into the water, and... even when you do that you will find this location to be very cramped, and you probably won't be able to get too creative with your building variety. Awful stone, which is not a gigantic problem, but that probably means this is not a great spot to start your first base

Not great, not terrible.

Resources: ~90% iron, ~90% copper, ~10% stone, 100% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Blood spiders, river raptors eating your crops, stone rats. You are right next to the swamp ninja hideout, so uh... yeah. Interestingly right in-between UC and dust bandit territory, so neither should mess with you...

2-U) The Unwanted Zone

The Unwanted Zone
1)

Description: This zone may be unwanted, but this base location isn't!(?)

Anyways, as you can see you can get copper, iron, stone, and all the values suck but this is a legitimate place for the discerning vanilla Kenshi player. Not too much else to say. If you do end up basing here I would recommend building your walls into the shape of a bent spoon, kind of, by circling the bowl in the screenshot above, where the water is indicated. That can be for your food and water, and you can build up on the plateau where the drills are. You have enough room here though to do whatever you want though, really.

The resources here are just low quality, but since this really should not be your first base, it probably won't matter.

Resources: 50% iron, 40% copper, 40% stone, 30% water, 90% fertility

Dangers: BEAK THINGS. And LOTS of them! Crabs too. Gorillos, and more!

2)

Description: If you came here to take advantage of the 'natural defenses' of The Unwanted Zone, here you go, the most centrally located spot in the area! As you can see from the above screenshot I outlined where you probably want your walls to be in order to cordon off a neat little base area. You could do it some other way if you so choose, the above is just how I would do it.

Where I put the stone drill, you can actually fit TWO stone drills if you so choose, if you really need that many building materials...

Resources: 50% iron, 50% copper, 50% stone, 30-40% water, ~87% fertility

Dangers: BEAK THINGS. And LOTS of them! Crabs too. Gorillos, and more!

2-V) Vain

Vain
1)

Description: You got space to build, all your resources, you have to build your wells slightly north down the hill but hey, not much of a problem. However, your fertility up on the hill is great so you don't need to do anything weird there. There's a hive town right near you where you can sell and buy stuff. Nothing especially good, nothing especially bad, just a solid spot.

Resources: 100% iron, 80-90% copper, 80% stone, 60% water, ~75% fertility

Dangers: Beak things. Maybe cannibal raids? Dust bandits?

2)

Description: This place looks like hell, but hey it's a pretty good spot. You're in the middle of nowhere, you only have to deal with gorillos, beak things, and cannibal raids, nobody else will trouble you. There's hive villages nearby so you can sell random stuff, and you have a fair amount of space to build. I ended up building a pretty L-shaped base though, because the slopes here are kind of annoying.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, ~60% stone, 80-90% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Beak things, cannibal raids, gorillos.

Special Note: I have actually based here before and it was a good time, so I can personally assure this one's a good one. The only thing you will quickly grow to hate is being almost as far as possible from everything in the world that matters.

3)

Description: Not a bad spot, you can probably wall it off without too much effort, and I like that you actually can put your crops down by the river, your ore up the hill a bit, and build some structures around it all. You're right in the middle of a trifecta of hive villages, and on top of a road, so you might get some occasion travelers passing by.

Resources: 100% iron, 100% copper, 60-70% stone, 0-90% water (depends on how high up the hill you put your well), 93% fertility

Dangers: Beak things, cannibal raids, gorillos.

4)

Description: This spot's okay. Not much to say. Look! You've got hell water, you've got your resources, and you could... probably wall off MOST of your base at least. Water is best down near the river, it sucks in the hills. What more could you ask for?

Resources: 90% iron, 90% copper, 80% stone, 80-90% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Beak things, cannibal raids, gorillos.

5)

Description: Crappy little island, but hey, if you have Slopeless you can probably place your structures on the water and have the doorways open out onto the land, which will open up a lot of extra room here. I wouldn't even bother with walls, you ought to only need some turrets, and a watchtower or two on the outlying islands would be the best way to go I think. Only thing to note is ALL the water here is acid, so you may need to build bridges (use walls) between islands and hope your characters use it, or... at least try to avoid excess wading.

This island also has some resources, unlike some of the others. Unfortunately, no iron or copper, so you need the Deep Drill Mining mod to really make this place work. If it's any consolation, at least everything else can be found legit, you can grow food, you can get water, and you can get good stone.

Resources: 0% iron, 0% copper, 80% stone, 90-100% water, 93% fertility

Dangers: Acid, cannibal raid, I saw some beak things out here too...

2-V) Venge

Venge

WARNING: Venge is an extremely hazardous zone for every race EXCEPT for Skeletons! Humans, Shek & Hivers will be in severe danger here. If you are simply crossing this zone, I suggest doing so at night, as quickly as you can.

If you have already explored and learned the secrets of Venge and would LOVE to settle here, I recommend you read the following spoiler:

You can safely base in Venge, but you need to give up two gear slots. You need an Armoured Hood and a Dustcoat (total 105% protection) for each of your Human, Shek and Hiver characters. This limits basing in Venge usually to much later in your playthrough when you at least have the capacity to craft these on demand, buy them, or simply compose a base squad comprised entirely of Skeletons!

Other gear combinations that can work include the Crab Raider set (Crab Armour + Crab Helmet = 110%) or possibly the Sleeveless Dustcoat and Crab Helmet (120%) so you do have some flexibility, but if having total freedom to wear whatever you want is important to you, or if you are attempting to define a uniform for your faction, Venge may not be for you. I personally would accept the tradeoff, given the 'benefits' of basing here, since at least the Dustcoat & Armoured Hood together are kind of attractive in their own way.

1)

Description: This spot's a little cramped, a little cozy, but you have freedom to build up or down the valley. The thing to watch out for in general, in this zone, is the hills dividing up the valleys and how you can cross most of them, so you'll need to make sure you wall off your base adequately, especially given the multitude of annoying roaming squads.

No fertility, and trash water, so you'll probably want Moisture Farming Enhanced and hydroponics to survive here, which should not be too much a problem if only because Venge is a mid-lategame base anyway.

Resources: 100% iron, 70-80% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Thrall squads, I saw some escaped slaves? Beak things, blood spiders, iron spiders...?

2)

Description: Probably a better spot than #1, if only because deeper into the zone. If you're building in Venge, you're probably here to make use of the unique properties of the area, and here you can do just that!

Resources: 100% iron, 70-80% copper, 100% stone, 10% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Thrall squads, I saw some escaped slaves? Beak things, blood spiders, iron spiders...?

3)

Description: And this is probably a better spot than #2! I think that settles it if you want to build here just go here, I looked around and couldn't find anywhere else worth mentioning. This spot not only is very VERY flat, it has water and fertility so you can grow delicious, pre-fried crops! Chewsticks for all!

Resources: 100% iron, ~70% copper, 100% stone, 70% water, 100% fertility

Dangers: Thrall squads, I saw some escaped slaves? Beak things, blood spiders, iron spiders...?

2-W) Watcher's Rim, Wend

Watcher's Rim

NOTE: There's just no particularly good spot to set up here, if you really really want to support the bounty hunters here for fun or roleplay, consider setting up only a military outpost or two, and have a proper self-sufficient base in the Spider Plains to supply your Watcher's Rim watchmen!

Wend
1)

Description: While if you perform a 'prospect' yourself you may find it says 'Okran's Pride' or something that isn't 'Wend' don't be fooled, this is Wend. It has terrible, meagre resources and it's almost impossible to place any buildings.

However! This location would be great for roleplaying as a bridge troll, either in service of the Holy Nation or in opposition to them, since you can very easily arrange an ironclad defense network here that approaching enemies can't do much about except die horribly.

Only thing to note is resources are bad here, you require hydroponics to make food, and you get only 10% water unless you drop a well into the valley behind the mountains, where you can get up to 80% water.

Refer to the above image for resource placement, I have 3 iron drills here, 1 stone drill, and 4 copper drills, though you have room for expansion and building more iron drills or copper drills, it's a pain to find where to place them.

Resources: 100% iron, 15-20% copper, 100% stone, 10-80% water, 0% fertility

Dangers: Holy Nation prayer day, possibly cannibal raids, dust bandit raids.


Special Note: Here you can see an example of what it might look like to cross the bridge with your defenses in the way. Terrifying.

2)

Description: This location, unlike Wend #1, will actually give you the space to build a fully-fledged base. The labyrinthine roads into the mountains nearby are confusing and hard to figure out, but this would be a pretty good point to build your secret mountain ninja hideaway. At night you could descend into Rebirth, rescue slaves, or perhaps kill a few guards here and there. Maybe harass Blister Hill which is very close by. Perhaps just take potshots at Holy Nation patrols, which do travel through the mountains here.

You could build yourself a rock-solid defense opposite Wend #1 in fact, while you can't build too close to Blister Hill, you have room to build some walls, gates and watchtowers!

As before, no fertility here, so hydroponics only. The water is hard to find but it does exist, maybe build several wells.

Resources: 100% iron, 15-20% copper, 50-70% stone, 10% water

Dangers: Prayer day, I would be VERY surprised if any raids can even reach you thanks to needing to walk through Rebirth or Blister Hill to get to you, but maybe cannibals, maybe dust bandits. Maybe some bonedogs?

Special Note: Possibly a good starter base, since you're just so amazingly safe here, there are no roaming squads that even come here except neutral skeletons or Holy Nation patrols.

3) OPTIONAL: Modding Recommendations

So, first and foremost, I totally respect players that play Kenshi modless. The vast majority of this guide is focused on serving vanilla players, but I threw in several locations here and there that require mods to be self-sufficient, usually via lategame research. Such mods are listed here:

Deep Drill Mining - this lets you get ores in exchange for power anywhere

Deep Drill Mining 

A Workshop Item for Kenshi

By: RustledJimm

https://i.imgur.com/NrstAKw.gif This mod adds in Deep drills. These dig deep under the ground to mine and do not require a nearby surface resource to work!

Moisture Farming Enhanced - this lets you get water in exchange for power anywhere

Moisture Farming Enhanced 

A Workshop Item for Kenshi

By: 2PercentNate

Tired of not being able to farm in dry climates? Well now you can farm the moisture out of the air! New update! Added a fourth tier of Moisture Collector.

Slopeless - this lets you build on weird surfaces more easily
(NOTE: also available on Steam, but the Nexus version is newer and more up-to-date!)

https://www.nexusmods.com/kenshi/mods/398

Now, aside from those, there's a couple more mods I would recommend to just about anyone that will enhance your gameplay and base-building in a positive way without going beyond 'vanilla':

Nice Map - pick whichever one you like, I use Grid + Zones + Zone names + Roads

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1607561817

Forgotten Buildings - many many buildings that are in the game already or were in the past are now buildable by the player, sometimes at great cost

Forgotten Buildings 

A Workshop Item for Kenshi

By: Mechanica

The largest collection of buildings and furniture from older versions of Kenshi and non-player towns. Over 400 new buildings and furniture pieces to construct, plus another 300 copies of buildings, walls and furniture...

Unofficial Patches for Kenshi - general Kenshi fixes

Unofficial Patches for Kenshi 

A Workshop Item for Kenshi

By: GE0

The Unofficial Patches for Kenshi (UPK) is a compilation of published bugfixes and several QoL improvements into one mod that's easy to download and manage.

RE_Kenshi - custom game speeds & RNG fixes

https://www.nexusmods.com/kenshi/mods/847

4) Conclusion

So, that's my list of basically every worthwhile base location in the game. It is not a complete list of EVERY location you could settle but I did my best to find as wide a range of useful or interesting locations as possible.

This took me about 2 weeks of solid work to put together, so I hope you get some use out of it.

If you feel your favourite zone is underrepresented, feel free to correct my mistake by contributing as detailed in section 1-1.

5) Credits & Contributions

Credits

Almost everything in this guide - me (Majorita)
Swamp #1 & #2 - LVL 1 Crook
Nice Map - Djeeshka (it was really useful in making this since it has a grid)

[Jackal]

Foglands 4 was not as quiet as i expected from your description lmao, i was constantly attacked from the moment i settled there. That said it was still 100% worth it due to the abundant resources, I am still building everything and had to hire some mercenaries to help defend but its shaping up very nicely thankyou.

Also amazing job on this guide i cant imagine how long it took you, your work is very much appreciated

[Lasershadow]

There is a very nice location in Darkfinger at X.14, Y.2 at the very South East tip of the grid square.
2 150 Iron Deposits and 2 100 Small Copper Deposits, 100 Stone and 120 Water everywhere. 100% Arid and 50% full 100 Fertility everywhere as well.
Also another 150 Iron Deposit just a short hop away in X.15,Y.3.

[SteelBlood]

Bonefields/High Bonefields, X:15 Y:24) Inside the giant rib cage just north of Catun. Facing Catun from inside the ribcage, you will see on the right a plateau leading into the High Bonefields. There is but a single way on to this plateau from inside the ribcage, easily gated off. From the other side of the plateau, outside of the ribcage, there are only a few easily blocked entrances. Has nearby Stone, Iron, Copper, can grow crops, my base lacks nothing there. Notes: building inside the rib cage can be VERY annoying due to bugs. If having trouble placing buildings, I recommend placing the building nearby, confirm build, use Shift F12 to move building where you want it, save and reload. Also the giant bones are NOT reliable at keeping enemies out, many just run right through them, so I have walls hidden inside the bones. Annoying to build at, but hard to beat the look of a city inside a giant ribcage.

[SteelBlood]

Cannibal Plains, X:8 Y:3) There is a large plateau between Cannibal Capital and the Leviathan Coast, with few easily blocked off or defensible entrances (recommend putting only 1 gate on side toward cannibal capital). The very northwestern corner of the plateau actually counts as Leviathan coast territory, so you can grow crops there. Iron you can get on the eastern side of the plateau, and copper just south past where I recommended putting the gate. Stone is included too. You can build a massive city here with few walls. Notes: when navmesh breaks, enemies can run through the rocks on the western side into the city, can build walls or fix navmesh to fix.

[RÊYTH]

Oh, I was thinking: For me, there needs to be a certain scenic charm to where I put down roots. I finally visited Fishman Island the other day and thought -- I could never stand to be here for more than a few hour (real time.) Like The Swamp, it's so dreary and depressing! hahaha. But in general, so many places I've read about are too unpleasant or look like junkyards. /shrug
I know it's post-apocalypse and all, but I need some eye-candy.

I know all this was labor intensive, thanx for your efforts.

[RÊYTH]

Oh, don't fret TOO much. Just your intent is acknowledgement enough. Purple-yellow combos would be better, but then there's a purple-blue issue. LOL, there's no way to win this game.
I'll muddle thru somehow
~cheers again

[Majorita]

Oh, sorry about that. I'll see if there's a better way for me to go about that, other than colour.

If it's any consolation only a couple places on the map require mods and I made sure to clearly write about it on the page, so be sure to check out my notes on individual locations.

[RÊYTH]

Haven't read much yet but THANX already in advance.
But... so few people understand the plight of the red-green color deficient -- (eg. Is that yellow or green?) Color weight is a real thing, too.
~cheers

[☢ Коктяузер ☢]

Thank you very much!

[Cryogenius333]

This is very comprehensive. I'm impressed. At the same time its a tad vague, though I can understand the desire to avoid spoilers.
The truth is you can set up just about anywhere if you are crafty/masochistic/strong enough. My base is set up just the to Northeast corner of the Lagoon(?) Right on the border between Cannibal Plains and the Hidden Forest. I actually ctrl+F12 deleted the Flotsam Ninja Scoutpost, stole their stormhouse, and built around it.

If I could offer you a critique? Your "grid" map is interesting but associating each grid to the locations in your guide is a real pain. I'm not saying you should number the grids(You said NO), but you should number the blue "base location" markers, and I would suggest significantly enlarging each square in your grid to encompass either 9 or 16 of the current squares. Its not quite as precise, but that's okay, because it remains comprehensive while still encouraging players to explore each zone and pick their own locations.