Complete Beginner's Guide to Kenshi (with added tips'n'tricks).

AKA. "how not to kill your character in first 10 minutes" with additional thoughts and tips on what to do later on. It is written with version 0.98 in mind.

1. Controls

So... you bought the game, installed it, went through initial options, chosen your character based on whichever feature you liked the most... and you ended up dumped somewhere with not a clue of what to do next.
And that is the beauty of it! Kenshi might be unforgiving but at least it will not railroad you to the happy-ending (tm).

First, let us get some rock-bottom basics out of the way.

Press spacebar to pause the game and familiarise yourself with the GUI layout. Read the tutorial pop-ups. Play around with basic controls, learn how to move the map around, get used to camera angles. Zoom-in, zoom-out. Read tooltips and popups on the GUI. Learn basic keyboard shortcuts - they are not very well explained in the manual... the defaults are:
Spacebar - for pausing/unpausing game. Use it often;
Alt key - for highlighting scattered items and signs. It's your second best friend after the spacebar;
M - for map;
C - for character stats screen;
I - for inventory screen;
...there is more but this should suffice for starters.

Mouse controls can be somewhat confusing as well. Important things to remember are:
Left click - selects player characters / NPC and features such as buildings and items. Useful to inspect those bandits over yonder or to check if the building you're about to enter is privately owned or open to public;
Right click - issues default interaction order to currently selected character. This is somewhat intuitive and defaults to "operate", "pick up object", "talk to", "attack", "go to sleep", "sit down", "build", "aid" or just simply and plainly "walk to". The icon changes to represent default action on hover over the desired feature, item or character.
Right-click-and-hold - brings out an additional interaction menu. It is used to access inventory of resource nodes, knock people out, dismantle things etc. Learn to use it often, perhaps even more often than simple right-click. That way you won't accidentally knock the shopkeeper out whilst training your stealth.
Shift + Right-click-and-hold - will add the targeted interaction into a "job list" of currently selected character. More on jobs little later...

In essence, you should treat Kenshi as a real-time strategy game in terms of controls, and you'll be fine.

2. Character(s)

For the sake of simplicity, I will assume you have started a "Wanderer" scenario for your first try.

No, seriously, you should. It offers some money to start with, a reasonably safe location to get to grips with the game and does somewhat limit the aggro of looking after a bunch of noobs.

This guy in the centre of the screen with a tag over their head is your character. It has needs. It has motion. It's alive - for now. This is your medium to interact with the world through your actions.
You can have many controllable characters. Their mugshots appear in the bottom-centre of the GUI - this is where you overview the situation "at a glance" and where you select your active character.
Every character you control has a full range of actions available to them. There are no arbitrary "classes" and the game will not prevent your thief/scout from wearing heavy armour.

Every PC has a set of attributes and skills. Both are increased through use and not through un-related experience re-distribution.
There are four attributes to every character.
- Strength - does what it says on the tin. Governs damage dealt with heavier weapons and carrying capacity. Increases naturally through hauling heavy loads and fighting with planks.
- Dexterity - governs damage dealt with lighter weapons / unarmed combat and certain aspects of fine manual jobs. Increases through fighting unarmed or with light weapons.
- Toughness - is basically damage resistance, since the "hit points" remain constant throughout the gameplay. You train it by being beaten within an inch of death and recuperating afterwards. The path to glory leads through suffering.
- Perception - governs efficiency of ranged weapons and is trained through the use of such.

Consider attributes of 1-30 as weak, 30-60 as adequate, 60-90 as strong, 90+ as epic. Most top warriors in the world have their respective attributes at around 85-90 mark.

There are many skills available, governing most actions a character can undertake, however at this point we shall not delve into detail. Any character can do anything and become good at it in time. Even if your Hive Prince has negative attitude towards labouring (racial modifier of -20%) it doesn't mean it will not become a pickaxe master after a month of hard labour in the stone mine. It just means it will take this character longer to reach epic levels than, for example, a Hive Worker.

Skills may govern:
- the speed of respective actions, for example labouring or engineering, or
- success chance in chance based challenges, for example lockpicking or assassination, or
- efficiency of execution, for example farming, or
- all of the above in combat...

I find "grinding" skill levels rather pointless not to mention extremely boring. The game is not designed to be that way. Sure, there are certain pieces of furniture in the game that allow training of certain skills to certain levels, but after the initial boost received through training, the proficiency will come naturally with long and patient work (...or you can cheat).

Word on health level of your character.
It does not have a single, universal HP counter, which is upped with every "level", oh no. No "level 49" characters who are massive damage sponges, heh. It doesn't have an extremely complicated layer model of Dwarf Fortress either. It's bang in the middle with its body-part based counters. Every body part has a certain, race-dependent, level of full health. This may decrease from sustained hits or enviromental influence, having negative impact of functionality of the said body part. While hits to limbs are usually non-lethal (save for death of blood-loss) and will cause temporarily or pemanent disability of the said limb, hits to vitals such as stomach, chest or head, are much more dangerous and may lead to quick and inevitable demise.
This basically means that even if you lose an arm to a feral bonedog (which then proceeds to flee with your limb to eat it in peace out of sight) but manage to patch yourself up and limp to safety, you can still survive and continue development of the character. Not to mention they will become tough as nails after this. What doesn't kill you...

3. Locale

Now that you know what you are looking at, the time has come to unpause and familiarise yourself with the location you're in. Unless you have chosen to start as the cannibal hunters or rock bottom nobody, you usually start in a relatively safe town and have enough time to poke around.

The "towns" in Kenshi comprise any number of shacks, towers and buildings, ranging in construction from dried-excrement-stuck-together-with-mud huts of the Hivers to the smooth multi-level outposts of humans. Most of the buildings serve no discernible purpose apart from local population lodgings and a source of low-value loot but there are several buildings in every town that you might want to check out.
- BAR - which is present in almost every town or village and sometimes even established on its own somewhere in the wild. Your primary source of meatshields recruits, good source of first-need items such as food and first aid kits but also the place to go to meet fencing specialist to offload stolen goods. Pay frequent visits.
- General shop - usually has generic goods for sale, food and items associated with local production but also occasional imported goods.
- Clothes, armour and weapon shops - sell clothes, armours and weapons respectively. Duh.
- Builders merchants - stock broad selection of various engineering materials from iron plates to electronic components.
- Travellers' merchants - offer food items and carrying equipment such as backpacks.

There are of course other buildings serving other purposes but I shall leave the joy of exploring and experiencing to you, dear reader.

Zoom all the way out and use the Alt key to highlight places of interest. You will see the shop signs highlighted in yellow. For now obviously you'll have to do some window shopping only, since initial funds are rather lacking. Right click to move about. Entering a building is a bit awkward as you have to make sure to click inside an open doorway and wait until your character gets in and the interiors are loaded. You may then proceed as normal.
If the building has more than one floor, use the buttons in the right-centre of the GUI to switch between them.
Shops are usually open between sometime past 6 am and about 10 pm. Bars are usually available to drink in for 24hours, 7 days a week.

Important note on breaking and entering: if the door is closed and locked (the cursor takes form of red padlock instead of white door left ajar) the inhabitants clearly wish not to be bothered and any noticed attempt on entering will be considered a crime. Even if the door is open, before you casually stroll into a shack, left click on the building in question and check the panel in the lower left of the GUI. If it says "open to public" you may enter without repercussions. If it says "private" you may still enter but be prepared for fast evacuation and a bounty on your head. Listen to what inhabitants have to say. They will usually warn you if you're about to do something wrong or are overstepping your mark.

The immediate area around a town is designated a no-build zone and offers an intermediate between relative safety within and savage lands without. Which basically means you have less distance to cover with angry bandits on your tail before the town guards come to help (bear in mind sometimes they don't). You should consider the area semi-safe to explore and to get to know which rock is good for bashing with a mattock and which wildlife specimens generally leave you alone. The town's neigbourhood also usually offers several conveniently placed raw material resources to exploit, but this will be covered a bit later.

4. Equipment

The time has come to use your initial money to outfit yourself for the journey. Spend some cash on one or two items of cheap food and a basic first aid kit (if you already haven't got one). These items - food and first aid - are the most important goods you should always keep in the inventory (unless you play as a Skeleton but in this case good luck buying repair kits). Always. And preferably more than one of each.

Oh... almost forgot... the food item is denoted by Nutrition stat in the item's description. If it lacks this stat, the item, however edible it looks, will not be consumed to satisfy hunger. Compare wheat and bread for example.

Now... buy the largest backpack you can afford by dragging it from the shopkeeper's inventory to the appropriate slot on your paperdoll.
Apart from click-dragging items, you may use the right click on an item and it will result in selling or buying one unit of said item. Holding shift whilst right clicking will attempt to buy or sell the entire stack. Your backpack is filled first if it's open, followed by the personal inventory.

Your paperdoll has several slots available. Namely: Head, Shirt, Pants, Boots, Body Armour, Weapon I and II and also Backpack. Some races cannot use shirt, boots and/or head slots. I have not yet found anything to use in the Belt slot so we'll ignore it for now. As most commenters point out, there is a "Lantern of Radiance" (which is just a standard lantern, but Hiver traders have a knack to exaggerate a bit) item available that fits into the belt slot. This item will help avoid negative modifiers when walking or working in the dark.
Though descriptions of the slots are rather self explanatory, I feel I the need to mention what in this game is classed as armour and what is not, as this sometimes may be confusing - for example a leather shirt is an armour even though it fits in the shirt slot while a Ninja Gi is technically a piece of clothing even though it fits in the armour slot. Basically, any piece of equipment that confers damage resistance is considered an armour and will have grades of quality. Simple as that.
The armour works by offering damage resistance to three main damage types - cutting, blunt and harpoon (which is a posh word for 'piercing'). The armour also has coverage attribute which governs how much of a body part benefits from the damage resistance.

Weapons in Kenshi fall into one of several classes. Melée weapons deal varied proportion of blunt and cutting damage and may boost your defensive or offensive combat score. Depending on the class and type of damage, they utilise either Strength or Dexterity stat (or both) for damage potential. To start with try to get a Jitte as a sidearm, both for its defensive bonus and because it uses the Strength stat which is much easier to train to acceptable levels than Dexterity. Jitte is hard to find though so a wakizashi or even a staff will do nicely. For starters. You will discover favourites later on, no doubt.
Crossbows are a new addition. They deal randomised amount of "harpoon" damage within fixed brackets (eg. 24-42) dependent on the type and grade. Other attributes include the range, accuracy, projectile type and projectile velocity. Your character will use whichever bolts you carry in the inventory, there is no need and no way to actually "equip" the bolts.

It is rather pointless for the beginner to invest in good armour and heavy weapons. They slow your character down, lower the combat score and are expensive to boot. We don't need that until the character trains up to resemble a warrior. For now buy some cheap rags and a straw hat and head out. It's time to make some dough.

5. Early Money Making

There are several ways to make money in Kenshi.
1. With hard work and dedication extract some raw material and sell locally.
2. Break into shops, steal and then fence the loot to the local thief guild.
3. Go hunt the wildlife, loot the corpses, sell the booty.
4. Go hunt the wanted criminals, knock them out, bring them back alive to the coppers, sell their belongings, pocket the money.
5. Go raid the ancient labs and workshops, sell acquired technology.
6. Dangle yourself as bait to the local banditry, lead the "train to zone"[thenoobcomic.com] to the town, loot the bodies, fence the loot.
7. Get some farmers together, settle down, wall up, prepare a long chain of raw material extraction and processing to feed the forges, craft arms and armour, sell for profit.

This list is by no means exhaustive and/or comprehensive. Also, for the beginner the only viable, almost-risk-free, income venue is the #1. With #2 you risk negative standings with the local government which has far-reaching consequences. #3 and #4 are suicidal at this point and #5 is in addition incredibly stupid. #6 has some merit and could work if done right but accidents may happen. #7 is at this stage largely unattainable and risky as it requires adequate bodycount and backup funding.

So, back to #1: hard work and dedication.
Some larger towns have a resource node within the walls that may be exploited for money. If nothing like this happens to be around, there is bound to be an iron or copper resource node in the immediate vicinity of a town, which can be used to the same effect.
The method is simple - right click the resources to mine them then wait until your skiver stops swinging the mattock using the petty excuse that "the machine is full". Then left click on the resource to open its inventory, open your own inventory and shift-right click to transfer the produce. Then pay shopkeeper a visit to offload. Rinse, repeat. Several round robins like this later you should have accumulated enough dough to afford larger backpack, a shack in the town where you can start your research or simply to pay for the company of a local drifter.

6. Combat

You're a beginner and a wuss. You don't do combat. Move on to the next section.

...actually no, wait.
The combat in Kenshi is varied and confusing to start with. There are several skills and abilities that influence your chance to cause bodily harm. Then other skills and the type of weapon you use influence the speed with which you cause bodily harm and its potential. Then add adverse weather conditions, opponent's armour, height, weight, elevation modifiers, impact of sustained wounds... and the result is a bloody mess that is hard to untangle without using multiple integration calculus.

So... basically to begin with, all you have to know is:
- Pay attention to your surroundings and watch out for groups of bandits or packs of hungry wolves heading your way.
- Run away from danger.
- If you can't run away, sneak around.
- If you can't run away or sneak around, wait until danger passes.
- If you can't do any of the above, equip the lightest weapon you've got, set the blocking stance to active (button on the right of the GUI) and shift-right click on the distant hills that lead towards the closest safe settlement. Your character will try its best to defend against the blows while slowly retreating. With a huge chunk of luck you'll still be alive and well when a patrol happens to walk by.

If no one arrives to help and the worst happens... oh well. Get up, bandage your wounds, nicks and scratches... or start again.

I promised to keep you alive for 10 minutes only.

7. Random Tips

Now that you're set and know how to survive and earn enough to buy food, it's time to set your long term goal. Will you be a lonely swordsman, hunting beasts for meat and trophies? Or a trader with many pack animals and strong bodyguard entourage, smuggling drugs to Stoat? Or maybe the leader of several city-states, being a prominent figure in the political geoscape of Kenshi? It's entirely up to you. There are many possibilities.
To help out, here's a handful of completely random tips and tricks.

In no particular order...
- The Hivers are the quickest on their feet sticks with the fastest attack speed, but they are quite flimsy. Late-game killing machines. Plan accordingly.
- A backpack full of raw iron or copper is your friend. Carry it with you (not necessarily on your back) at all times. It will help train your strength almost imperceptibly as you go about your business and it serves as emergency trading commodity should Hungry Bandits beat you up and steal all your food.
- Having Skeletons may seem like a good idea to begin with as they require no food and seem to be rather sturdy but they are hard to come by and even harder to maintain as they accumulate damage over time which can only be nullified using pretty advanced technology.
- Research is best made in relative safety of well-guarded town in a purchased property. Not only because of relative safety but also because of good access to shops full of books.
- Even if you are a master of large two handed sword always keep a smaller one-handed weapon, such as katana or jitte in the appropriate slot. There are places where it might come in handy.
- Bear in mind that the xenophobes from the Holy Nation hate everyone that is not a male human. This extends to a person that had lost a limb and replaced it with prosthetics.

[Wartdog]

I escaped from a Holy Nation prison once with a character who'd lost both arms and could not lockpick.

Turns out, you can still use your legs to steal clothes from the prisoners in cells next to you, which will make your "Looks like a Slave" go down over time.

Three in-game weeks, but eventually the Paladins just, let her go. Picked up a plank to sell off the ground outside, and it was a skip and a hop to the Hivers for a bucket arm.

Few years later, and now she's got Specialist KLR arms and is Strength 106.

Never give up!

[keoriv]

> Break into shops, steal and then fence the loot to the local thief guild.

Then buy the stuff back from the Shinobi fence and sell it back to the original owner for more money, because dipping it into the guild fence makes it un-stolen and you get a better price at standard merchants.

[Hollowess]

On my first playthrough, I immediately ran out to the wastes and proceeded to beat bandit with a stick until I killed him. I hit him repeatedly in the gut. He died. That is how I got my first piece of armour.

[Wyote]

Thank you for this :) makes starting alot less intimidating.

[Armchair Civilian]

Just something i've noticed from "dual-wielding" two weapons in your main slot - characters will use whichever is uppermost of the two, so you can ie switch between a polearm for adventuring to a heavy polearm for fighting armoured opponents.
Unless you go inside a building, at which point they will equip any weapon in their secondary slot instead.

[Homiccus]

IIRC the characters will switch their weapons automatically when entering buildings - providing their secondary one is better indoors. But i don't think there is any way to force a character to use a specific weapon apart from clearing the slot.

[MdubNinetyTwo]

Is there a way to have character switch their weapons if they have two melee weapons equipped? Or do I have to take one out of their equip slot and just move it to their inventory?

[NortheastBlackwood]

Wow, this is well-packed with info and well-written; Bravo. Even spelled and punctuated pretty properly! It's nice to see something be created which is helpful and mindfully made. Thank you for doing so. I've been playing this game since long before the whole map opened up and just skimming through here, I noticed a handful enough of useful points that I'll be saving this for a more thorough read-thru when I'm not waiting to click CONTINUE on the other screen... right now...
cheers!

[Minimum Viable Suffering]

You can assist guards in bar fights and fighting criminals if you assign a character the "Bodyguard" job to one of them. This doesn't boost faction relations, I don't think, but it's helpful if you want some quick bounty money, or want to train combat skills in relative safety without hiring your own goons.

[Homiccus]

Getting enslaved doesn't mean it's game over! Train up stealth and lockpicking and you'll be free in no time - and maybe get a few friends along the way.