How I Start Every Game

This guide is gonna be showing my personal method for an easy start, that gives you at least 1 high toughness character, ready to take on the challenges of Kenshi's world.

Intro/Setup

Okay, lets get started.

For the record, I only have ~200 hours in Kenshi, so I wouldn't say i'm an expert, and I also play with mods, so your results may be slightly different than mine. This guide will also assume you have a basic understanding of Kenshi's mechanics.

For this guide, we're gonna be using The Slaves start (starting in Rebirth). This is objectively one of the best starts in vanilla Kenshi. It allows you to train your characters skills without any possibility of death or even needing food. The Holy Nation guards will heal and place you back into a slave cage whenever you are knocked out by them, and supply you with infinite lockpicking XP (shackles and cages). The only downside of this method is it may take a few hours of IRL time and quite a few in-game days, depending on how strong you want your character(s) to be.

Character/Race

The race you choose for your characters is entirely up to you, with the only exception being a Skeleton character. I haven't tried this method with one, but I am confident it would not work due to the Holy Nation guards not carrying Skeleton repair kits.

How many characters you want depends on personal preference, I personally play with a mod that changes The Slaves start to only have 1 character, but you can keep the default 2, and the method will still work fine, you'll just have more to manage, with 2 characters to train.

In terms of roleplay, it's also mostly up to preference, but I think it works best with a Shek character, who plans to take down the Holy Nation for glory and revenge.

Starting Out

Okay, finally we can start.

As soon as you spawn in, follow the start description and get into a cage. Once properly enslaved, we'll have multiple strats we can execute.

• Shackle and cage Lockpick training
  
• Shackle-based Strength training
  
• Escape and Combat
  
• Escape and Assassination / Sneak Training
  
• Obedient Slave

Let's start with the easiest, Lockpicking.

Lockpicking Training

Lockpicking is fairly self explanatory. pick the locks for your cage and shackles with a guard in sight or without sneaking, and they will re-lock your cage, and replace your shackles once you take them off. Basically just repeat this step until you have a lockpicking skill that you're comfortable with. Kinda tedious, but easy.

The only downside to this is that it will eventually cap, usually around 30 or 40 lockpicking skill, as the locks they use are (perhaps intentionally) pretty low level.

Strength Training

Okay, onto maybe the second easiest thing, Strength training.

This goes hand in hand with Lockpicking, and the method is just as simple.

Lockpick your shackles off, store them in your inventory, guard puts new ones on, repeat until you have a full inventory. Once your inventory is full, just let your character perform the obedient slave job, so as they walk around, their strength will level with the very heavy shackles in their inventory.

You COULD try beating up or stealth KO'ing another prisoner and carrying them for extra XP, but honestly its easier just to do the initial bit, and walk away from your computer for a while to come back to around 20 or 30 strength. I HIGHLY recommend a mod that increases the XP rate for strength, as this will take a very long time without it.

Obedient Slave

This is really not that good, but it's stacked with the Strength Training stat by default.

Fairly simple, as this just involves your character following their slave duties, training Labouring and Athletics if you're not carrying around shackles for Strength XP. Basically just walk away from the computer for an hour or two. Boring.

You Choose Violence (Toughness/Martial Arts)

This is EVEN SIMPLER.

Funny thing about being a slave (that sounds really bad) is that your captors won't let you die. So the strat here is simple. Lockpick your cage, bust on out, and pick a fight with the guards. Best to also ditch your shackles for this.

Now here's the best part. When you inevitably get your ass kicked, the guards will heal you back up, and place you back into a cage to recover. The effect here is obvious, as this process can be repeated to level up Toughness, Martial Arts, and Dodge at the same time. Again, just repeat this ad infinitum until your character is as strong as you desire (usually around 30-40 toughness is good enough).

This is a fairly common strat, but is undoubtedly one of the best ways to easily train Toughness without risk of death.

Assassination/Stealth/Thievery Training

Alright, this is a little more involved.

This strat is useful for training the three stealth skills, Assassination, Stealth, and Thievery.

The plan is pretty simple. Do whichever strat tickles you during the daytime, and at night, you break out of your cage, and sneak around. this will be much easier if you've been put in one of the upper cages inside the slave buildings, or one of the poles outside under the statue. sneak around the guards and prisoners for your Stealth XP.

Next, find a prisoner who's far enough away from the guards (best to use the ones tied to poles under the statue outside), and Stealth KO them over and over again for easy Assassination XP. Once you get good enough that you're knocking them out consistently, move on to the next prisoner in the line.

Thievery is a little harder, the method I use is just stealing an item off a table or container, dropping it onto the ground, and stealing it again, rinse and repeat. This should work as long as you're far enough away from the guards.

A theoretical use for this would be to pickpocket all the guard's weapons, and stashing them in containers so the guards are forced to use their fists when fighting you, possibly making it easier to escape or making the fights last longer for more Martial Arts/Dodge XP.

ESCAPE!!!!!!!!!

ALRIGHT BOYS, now that your character is through boot camp, its time to get out and start making moves in the world of Kenshi.

Method is pretty simple. Bust out of your cage, drop your shackles, and sneak out. Your best chance is to do this at night, with a decent Stealth stat, and to sneak out the eastern gate, following the path as east as you can until you're back out to the back entrance to Blister Hill. Before leaving though, make sure to steal as much food as you can off of tables in the slave buildings, assuming you've trained your skills enough to make that easy.

Once you're back out to the outskirts of Blister Hill, the world's your oyster. You'll most likely be starving to death, so you'll need to buy/steal some food. From there, it's up to you. Stay clear of Holy Nation territory for a while, until your slave status goes away.

Afterword

So that's it. I use this method pretty often, to get a good starting character who can do most of the heavy lifting for a playthrough.

Let me know in the comments if there's anything you'd like me to add to the guide, as I'm aware there's probably much better strategies than the ones I've developed.

Thanks for reading, and watch out for Beak Things!

[Vexxan]

Another fun thing to do is when you’re training assassination and you are able to knock out the guards.

Strip their armor off and put them in the cages. The other guards will enslave their fellow guards when they see they are in a cage without shackles. I had a slaves start where towards the end of my stay at rebirth, there wasn’t a single guard who was guarding anything due to all of them becoming slaves themselves.

[supercoolman [FWKZT]]

the holy nation is also a great place to live in general so the slave start is kinda bad seeing as it limits you to living almost only in shek controlled areas at least the first 100 hours of escaping your also bound to get a high bounty so holy nation land is completely off limits (but with the training of stealth and assassination its easy to cheese the entirety of the game including bug master and holy master generals.)

[Chmerity]

You missed the obvious/classic escape plan.

Knock out guard during a night, steal and equip armor, walk out the front door, master of disguise.