Ok, so, you bought Kenshi and you ended up here. You may have played some of the game already or just wanted to know what you are getting into.
I've put in some time both before and after creating this guide, since the guide's creation some things have changed, however most of the information is still relevant from 2018. I'm a very visual learner so this guide will have many images that aren't to important, (some still will be important so at least take a close look at any screenshots that I add) so on that note let's begin.

P.S.--The people in the comments also provide some helpful information, so make sure to check down there.

This section will contain some info about things that aren't pointed out in the game that you either learn through the loading screen tips or by playing the game for an extended period of time. This section will grow with time.

You cannot force yourself to eat food, your character will automatically eat food from their inventory or a friendly backpack once their hunger meter reaches 240(if your bar becomes completely yellow you will be starving/malnourished)

Your Backpack is a piece of equipment that adds a completely new secondary inventory to your character while equipped.

Your larger weapon slot is your outdoor/primary weapon. Indoors you will use the weapon equipped in your secondary slot. Unless you don't have anything equipped in it, then you will use your primary.

Picking locks is illegal so if you are seen doing so people will get mad :(

If you commit a crime a status is applied to your character for 3 seconds(if you don't "fail") during this time if you are seen or found you will be attacked by guards.(Think of it as the time it takes to steal something from a shelf and put it into your inventory)

There is also a 30 second "committed crime" status where you "made noise" or "were seen" committing the crime, for this time guards will come for you(and know where you are).

When stealing an item the game "rolls" for each item you steal, based on your steal percentage.

You can stun lock opponents, with a large squad you can knock back an NPC(stagger) repeatedly preventing them from attacking. However while they are in the stagger animation they can not be hit (This applies to you too!).

You can loot detained bandits, while they are locked/chained up in the police station they can be looted.

Carry around a body to help raise your strength stat. The body doesn't take up inventory space and can be used as a makeshift backpack. If you put items into the body's inventory you can carry them and the body back to a shop. (Be careful though bodies disappear over time!)

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING-FOOD- I just now have experienced what its like to have your party go full red in food. They pass out every few seconds, movement speed is halved(or fourthed whatever its slow) , you try to carry them but then pass out, over and over and over. Then you get food and it just burns away your party could easily eat a horse and will eat the equivalent of 2 elephants in their recovery.

♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣XXXPLOIT♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣ I'm not a fan of using things like this but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do... Ok so to start this Exploit is for the legendary skill of TELEPORTATION. I've tested this as of 2020, the first time it happened was on accident, I still made use of it so whatever. To do this we use the same method for getting characters out of walls with the "reset squad positions" box. This will move all characters from all squads to one location.
-Select a squad member that is in the location that you want to go to (you can only teleport to other squad members)
-Save the game
-Now load the game with the squad positions box checked
-Your team should all be teleported to this character's location

Athletics is the most important skill in the game, enemies will attack conscious foes first, if your squad is knocked out wild life will start to eat them, but if you have one character faster than them you can kite the enemies away and let your team get to a safe area.

Do not:

• Run out into the wild without useing the camera to scout it out first.
  
• Attack or get close to Bonedogs or Spiders.
  
• Forget to save before every encounter.
  
• Run out of town with a fully loaded inventory.
  
• Run straight into ruins without scouting the whole area first.
  
• Test your fighting capabilities on town guards.
  
• Attack wandering assassins.
  
• Go out of town at night(hard to see).
  
• Turn off auto save(it'll save you sooooo much time if you forget to save and get in trouble).
  
• EVER PUT YOURSELF NEAR THIS
  
• 
  [Quick Rundown{Spiders may appear to be glass cannons but they are more like bullet-proof glass cannons, tough and hard hitting} 3/4 Times Ive run into spiders they have wiped my squad and I had to reload, also they don't drop anything worth while.]

Do:

• Set your fellow NPC's to Bodyguard(they will defend and follow you where ever you go).
  
• Set yourself as a medic. By shift left clicking on a wounded NPC you can set a "job" of medic to a character, they will then heal wounded friendly characters whenever they have a medkit and are nearby.
  
• Raise your athletics before anything else, 40 is the recommended standard. (drop off all your stuff somewhere safe and run back and forth across town repeatedly)
  
• Save often, especially when you are testing something you don't quite understand.(No one is going to be mad at you for reloading when you don't even know what went wrong.)
  
• Play dead when the need arises(You do this automaticly when you are beaten and wake back up just dont click anywhere)
  
• Run like a baby when things get hairy.
  
• Sacrifice everyone else to save yourself(Unless you want to be a hero)
  
• Take a break day to heal your character.
  
  
• Use night time to do research and stat increases.
  
• Take it slow.
  
• Check the stats of enemy NPCs before you begin conflict, by left clicking on an NPC you can see their Attack/Defence/Toughness which help you determine if you will be able to defeat them in combat.

Okay so in the bar you may or may not find your new best friend. In my case there was an NPC waiting for me to recruit him for free. Most NPC's as far as I know cost 3000 to 6000 cats to recruit with a few exceptions. If you can't recruit an NPC here don't worry there are always more.

Now that you've stopped in the bar it's time for you to start your adventure. My recommendation is to open your map with the "M" key and find Squin. This is my town of choice.

So you may have noticed by now that your camera is the all seeing eye (except for buildings that you're not inside of). Don't worry it is in fact an All-Seeing Eye, you can see everything that is on your screen in real time even if you pause the game you can still move the camera around and see all the NPC's in your area. Use this to your advantage. Scout around town before you leave and try to get an eye any enemies around (hungry Bandits or dust Bandits). Wait for them to get out of your way and then run all the way to Squin.

Now that you made it to Squin and I recommend you buy some food at the bar and go to the police station. On the 2nd or 3rd floor of the police station you will find some training dummies you want to stand and use those until your melee attack reaches 15.

Your goal now should be to get 7500 cats. Why? To buy your first house. What house? You see that big pile of rubble, there, that's your house. But how am I going to make all those cats? To start you're going to want to buy some food from the bar. Now wait, for what exactly? Wait for some animals or bandits to come close to the town and then attack and lure them back to the town guards which will kill them. Take their animal skins and meat and other loot and sell them at the bar or any of the other shops in town and you will most likely made yourself at least a thousand cats. Repeat this process until you can buy your house and don't forget to recruit any available NPC's in the bar.

Assuming you bought the house that Rubble is now yours. the General Store in town will sell you equipment you can use to build the house. Now that I bought this house what's it good for? You use this house as your first base of operations running an external Base outside of a town is dangerous because Bandits will attack and kill you. However within Squin the town guard will keep you safe as long as you're within the walls or at least near the walls. Now you'll want to lure animals and bandits near the walls so that the town guard can attack them while you simultaneously attack them this will raise your stats and allows you to get some new equipment that you can use with your character. all the other guys I've read have told me to do this process over and over again until my stats at least reach 40 and strength and toughness but I'm much too lazy to do that so I jumped right in and started to play the game the hard way(lies). My plan for the game after acquiring my house was to build a research bench and I believe this should be your plan as well. Acquiring you research is the first step towards building your base. Under the training section of the research tree you will find the training dummies and other training equipment for your character these are very important.

Don't fret and don't save load unless you have to. Getting beatup is part of the game and it raises one of your most important stats "Toughness". This stat determines how much damage your character can take before they pass out from pain.(More on this some other day)

(This section is so you can easily pull up these links while still in full screen)
This is just the standard link to the games wiki:
http://kenshi.wikia.com/wiki/Kenshi_Wiki

Here is a link to the full map of the game with locations:
https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/kenshi/images/a/ae/Kenshi_Location_Map.jpg/revision/latest

And a link that shows territories that the in game factions hold:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/kenshi/images/1/15/Kenshi_Territory_Map.jpg/revision/latest

(A section about how to get out of a situation that you can't save load out of)

Your getting eaten.--------Welp your screwed it might eat you whole or just a limb or 2. In which case you should do everything you can from your previous saves to prevent this situation, run, abandon, drop everything. If you come out of this alive and dont have a save to load, congrats, look at all that toughness you got, now you just need some replacement limbs, you might get lucky and find one laying around, but lets be honest thats not likely, in which case I've found that the Hive tend to sell simple replacement limbs. Good Luck.

Your characters are stuck in a wall----- First, save the game. Then load the same save but make sure to select the "reset squad positions" box. This will move your entire group to one area. If this did not work then try to get the character stuck in the wall as close to the edge of the wall as possible. Next get another party member right next to them by the wall. Now, tell the party member (outside the wall) to pick-up the other party member. This should get them out of the wall, just to be safe move away from the wall before you set them down.

Your party members keep getting enslaved----- Slavers will enslave anyone captured in a prisoner cage or anyone that is knocked out (Not sleeping). To prevent your downed party members from being enslaved, pick them up and carry them untill they wake up.

(There are pureists in the game, they hate anyone that isn't a greenlander male.)
So here we are. The supposed holy land. If you are not a greenlander male I'd advise you to stay away until you have someone in your party that is. They attack non-humans pretty much on sight. Skeletons might as well not even try. There are hundreds of these guys just roaming around waiting for trouble. Try not to build a base in their area if you have made them mad because they will enact a crusade on you without mercy. The only good part about the area is that the farms are ripe with ever so sweet loot. Food, Steel bars, Iron plates, all sorts of sellable goods.

My first base I set up was a single Stationhouse on the edge of the Shek Kingdom. I've since loaded a save before that and played from there, here's why. Bases get raided. HARD. As of what I've seen you will get raided by low level bandits/Dust Bandits/Factions. Several hours after you construct your first structure you will be attacked, like clockwork. I loaded my save a few times to see what would come to attack me and 3/4 times(1/4 being bandits) it was Shek warriors that were "testing my worth" there were 2-3 parties of them(per attack) roughly 8 warriors each with mid level stats(20-45). They wiped the floor with me each time, I closed and locked the door and had my 4 crossbowmkII turrets shooting them the whole time. They beat down the door after roughly 3 of them had been defeated. They then beat my party (18 strong) to near death and waited for anyone stupid enough to stand back up. They did leave on their own after 12(?) hours but their task was listed as "looting town" so I imagine that if I had any resources laying around they would have taken them.

After experiencing this I think that you should be reasonably strong before starting a base (at least in this area). I'll add to this section after I have had bases in other areas.

There is a setting to stop raids on your player founded bases, this can and will save you if you don't have strong enough characters to fight off the endless waves of animals an NPCs that come to take your land

You may have followed this guide to the letter, or not. Either way at some point you are going to want to boost some of your stats, here's my methods.

-Assassination- If you live in a city and own a house then your going to want to find some bandits to lure back to town so the guards can deal with them. Then when they have all been knocked out pick up which ever one you want and take him/her home. If you have a prisoner cage then then put them in it and patch them up. Wait till they heal fully (let some time pass 1-2 days they have a chance to become non-hostile this way) and are awake then lock and close the door to your house and enter sneak mode, and let them out. Right after they are set free you should see a red fist icon when you hover your mouse over them. Knock. Them. Out. Do this on repeat untill your knock-out percentage reaches 100% at that point you will not gain any more experience for Assassination. Repeat this process with higher level enemys untill you reach your desired skill level. *This method can also be used for weapon training, just make sure not to kill your bandit!

-Strength- Carry a heavy load all the time. Buy the biggest backpack you can and fill it with ore ore(or) rock this will put your character above their maximum carrying capacity and raise their strength as they move around. Or as I mentioned earlier in the guide carry a body around everywhere. Keep in mind that the more weight you carry the higher the xp boost will be on your strength. (You CANNOT raise strength and athletics at the same time. (Kinda) You need a low weight to gain speed and a high weight to gain endurance.)

-Thievery- idk, but what I do is steal stuff from people's houses, or general storage buildings. I close the door to the building (for some reason this matters) and steal away at anywhere from 80-100% chance.

-Athletics- This one is easy. When you are waiting on shops to open in the morning or need them to restock, put down all your stuff and run back and forth across town over and over and over again. *You can use this same method for stealth, sneak across town, back and forth over and over at night and your stealth will skyrocket. (You CANNOT raise strength and athletics at the same time. (Kinda) You need a low weight to gain speed and a high weight to gain endurance.)

-Toughness- If you have a party capable of taking out a small group of bandits then this method becomes viable. Either you send your whole group in and attack the bandits (getting a small boost to toughness for everyone) or you send in one lone guy to take them all on while your group watches (set them to hold or else they'll run in) your one guy (most likely) gets beatup and knocked out (giveing him/her a boost) then send in your group to beat them and rescue your friend. *By setting a character to "block" you can raise your defence with these same methods.

-Lockpicking- I've got 2 methods for this,
1. Put yourself in the town prisoner cage and pick the lock.(The guards will let you out if you can't)
2. Go to a bar in town and wait till night then go to the top floor and sneak, you will be nearly invisible because of the darkness. Then pick the locks to the chests on the second floor. I think they relock everyday?

-Perception/Ranged skills- I honestly don't know.

-Everything else- Just do the stuff associated with it and the skill will raise. Such as labor, science, medic, weapon/armour smithing, swimming.

Ok, so, yeah, I've put some hours into the game and started a new playthrough. Exploration is very fun even the second time.

The Following sections of the guide are the newest and... hopfully helpful.

My second play-through I decided to play as a sneaky thief and I can say its a much better start than trying to brute force your way through the world.

Playing as a stealth character means you risk it all for the sake of the sweet sweet loot. So I started out in the hub again as the lone wanderer and gathered the funds required to join the thieves guild. After that I realized they don't offer too much sadly. After joining you gain:

• A safe place to hide
  
• A bed to sleep on
  
• Access to some special stealth gear
  
• A place to sell your stolen goods
  
• Some guys to watch your back in town
  
• A place to train your lock picking

That's really it, you can't recruit anyone from them or build in their towers(they have several bases in the major cites of the game). You can use their facilities for free which is nice if you get beat up trying to rob somebody, but its not much for 10000cats.

Improved method to raise assassination skill-- If you find a wandering assassin and you are friends with the Thieves guild you can knockout the assassin over and over to gain massive increases to your stat.

There is however a silver lining to a stealth character, after raisin(hmm fruity) your stealth stat its time to seal(flop). So I have learned that if one character is caught stealing it DOES NOT mean that the whole squad is punished. So your best course of action is to find one more squad mate for your team. After that steal everything with your main character and have your secondary just sit by and watch (on passive). If/When your main is caught they will get a bounty and be wanted by the local faction, so whats the easiest way to deal with this? Transfer all the stolen goods to your other character as fast as possible then set your main to just block(we don't want assault on our charges) and allow them to be captured by the police. Now if you have enough money, bail them out of jail, but if not send your secondary to another city to sell your goods, comeback, and bail them out. This prevents you from being sold into slavery which is a whole other problem you don't want.

After you have had fun doing that for a while but want to increase your money->time ratio head up north to World's End and search around the edges of the coast and Holy Nation Territory to try to find Skeletons. Skeletons carry some of the best weapons in the game which means they are worth a lot of Cats(Meow). So you sneak up behind them------After following the Assassin training portion of the Guide------and knock them out one by one(usually in groups of four) and steal their weapons. You can rack in 30000Meows purr group if you succeed in stealing from all of them.

Armories are more dangerous than other ruins as they will always have security spiders in them.

-----Howler Maze-----The Howler Maze easily earns the name of Crab Town in my mind. We got ya baby crabs, ya adult crabs, Heal we got a mega crab, take your pick. There are so many crabs that this area is also a no fun zone.

Anywhere with certain wildlife, and cannibals, after your party is knocked unconscious they will be eaten (damage to limbs until they reach zero, then they will have been consumed, after that you must purchase new limbs). Cannibals will kidnap you party members for later consumption, spiders raptors, beak-things and bone-dogs will eat you immediately(there are other animals that follow these rules as well).

I know how much you like low quality images so here is a simple map of death areas.

The areas marked in red should be treated as the most dangerous areas in the game based on the enemies you can run into. Not all areas are equal and you wont necessarily die if fight in these places.(After a fresh start though, these areas will end your play-through.)

The Fog Islands are a deathtrap to weaker parties, the enemies there are relatively weak but they are endless. They are cannibals and will eat any party-members that they can catch and take away.

The Swamp's Blood Spiders... they have high attack speed and deal a lot of damage when they hit. They also come in groups so where there is one there are many.

The Crater/The Grid This area isn't as bad as it used to be, Beak Things used to be everywhere and they will beat you down with their high HP pools, they will also eat you after you are downed.

Sniper Valley It is what it sounds like, sniper robots that are very hard to spot, they shoot quickly and can kill or take-down a party member in one hit.

Ashlands--Endgame-- Its an endless group of the strongest enemies in the game this is the last place you should ever be, regardless of what you have faced before, these guys are stronger.

Arach Its a small area without much going on, a boss lives in this area so the enemies that roam the area are moderately strong.

Everywhere else is much safer than these areas, you may run into large groups of NPCs in some of the unlisted areas but they wont eat you when your down nor will they be all around you after your group regains consousness. I've left out some exceptions on this list to avoid spoiling to much and to allow you to run into some hell holes. :p