Greetings!

This is a revamped attempt to simplify the earlygame start for players brand new to Kenshi. I will explain pretty much everything important as we go, and at the end of this guide my goal is for YOU the player to be set for money, and have maybe one or two followers you can maybe think about starting a base with, if that appeals to you because base-building is optional.

I've basically figured out a strategy that anyone can pull off, provided you select the correct start, and unlike my previous guide, this is EXTREMELY consistent, since there are many fewer stress points, the journey here is significantly shorter, the areas you traverse are significantly easier to deal with, and the loot may even be better in terms of raw monetary value.

However, there is a tradeoff. This guide will not necessarily get you cracked gear and equipment, or as many followers. Additionally, and I want to say this in bold:

If you are a Skeleton, Hive or Shek lover, please be aware this guide is relying on a specific vanilla Kenshi game start that prevents you selecting races other than Greenlander and Scorchlander.

So, in some ways this is also a 'sidegrade'. Nevertheless, I'm going to call this a 2.0 because I think it's going to be much easier and therefore more fun. You may even think of this as merely a companion to the original guide. Or perhaps a SEQUEL!

However, it seems like a lot of people enjoyed my first guide, so here's a link:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2951812219
You may want to check it out - AFTER you're done with this one. It may help you find extra locations to explore for loot and equipment.

For now, though, let's get started.

Optional section. You can move onto the next bit if you like.

You may wonder why this is '2.0' and I didn't just edit my previous guide.

Because, I still stand by that guide and all the advice I gave. I think it is a good guide, but one thing I was not happy about was just how many different locations I told the player to go to, and where to go and what to do, and there were some spoilers for some areas that I think are more fun if you find them organically on your own.

We'll be basically dipping our toes into a couple areas up in the middle-north of the map. I feel less bad about spoiling these areas for people by just showing and telling them all about them, since they're a lot simpler.

While in my screenshots, you will no doubt see I am running a few mods here, I am deliberately running with a very minimal mod setup for this guide.

I will list the ones I am using below, PURELY so you know what I am using. This is just so I can fully disclose what I am using, so you know what the differences are between your game, and mine.

You do not have to install any of these, but I am sure some people are looking for recommendations, so I will talk about them here anyway and why I use them. Hopefully this is helpful to you.

I do want to stress, though...

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO INSTALL ANY OF THESE!
Whatever copy of Kenshi you are running RIGHT NOW, is perfectly fine to progress through this guide!

https://reshade.me/

I am running ReShade to add shaders to Kenshi to make it look... different. I'll say 'different' not 'better' because Kenshi looks okay by default, I just have chosen to change how it looks to suit my preferences. You'll probably see in my screenshots various things like extra anti-aliasing and ambient occlusion and different colors and so on. This is why.

I would only recommend ReShade if your computer already runs at a solid FPS in Kenshi already, because once you start picking up more recruits, maybe building a base, and so on, you'll probably start to lose FPS.


https://www.nexusmods.com/kenshi/mods/847

This I freely would recommend to everyone, because it's a fantastic mod that fixes an RNG bug and does some other nice things too. It has an installer, and it's effortless to put together.

I personally feel it is a mandatory mod. Without RE_Kenshi, I could not have made some of the guides I have made for Kenshi.


https://www.nexusmods.com/kenshi/mods/506

I have mostly found Kenshi to be a relatively stable game even with large mod lists, but this is a nice extra to have. I don't honestly know if it has helped me avoid crashes, because if you don't crash, then... it's hard to notice the absence of something. But it seems safe to use, so you may as well get it anyway.




https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1613824353
I am a huge fan of this map. It replaces the map you see when you press M in-game, with a much nicer map. It has... a grid, relatively accurate zone divider lines, zone names, and roads drawn on, which are also relatively accurate to where the game's pathfinding thinks roads are, by default!

I think that having Zone Names is in itself, something of a spoiler, right? But at the same time, it is just a name. I think it's nice to be able to see names of places you can go on the map, because it makes exploration easier. You can see 'Okran's Valley' for instance and decide to visit it because it sounds interesting.


https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2931184188
It's nice to see more of the map...


https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2932844856
... However, I prefer the 'Little Edition' because I think it looks nicer. That's it! Personal preference. FSM is a prerequisite for this one, however, so if my mod choices here have inspired you to install some of these, then make sure you get both and put Little Edition later in your mod load order. Or, if you want the regular 'Full Screen Map' edition just get that one.


https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1200632417
I am technically running a... more advanced version of DarkUI, that I don't really want to recommend because it involves replacing Kenshi's data files, but I have no trouble telling people about the much easier and much safer version of DarkUI, as above. It makes your UI darker and in my opinion much nicer. That's all.

For the sake of completeness though I will mention it since I think it's great, but it is more advanced. I am running,
Nice Textures Collection - Replacer Version, by SCARaw[www.nexusmods.com].
So check it out if you're curious. There is also a mod version, but as explained by SCARaw it's slower since it has to load all the vanilla textures in memory first, then it loads the mod version and replaces them with new ones.

... And that's all!

Kenshi. A game of blood, swords, cutting, swords, and wastelands of the post-apocalyptic type.

It is the 41st millennium. Or perhaps the 42nd. Or perhaps the 112th? Or really, who knows. All we know is that a lot of stuff happened a while ago. Now, people are kind of thriving and struggling in this desolate wasteland of a world, basically doing their best to make it.

People kind of are, even! People are doing surprisingly well, in some cases. The Holy Nation has a surprisingly stable base of power, and plenty of food and access to fresh water and so on. I'd daresay they're doing pretty good, and the enduring spirit of man seems to be well and truly alive, in the world of Kenshi.

This is also what the game revolves around, being indomitable and enduring, and also loading your last save when you die. Anyway, let's get on with it.

So the first thing you see when you open up Kenshi, is this.


Also note I have CTD fix installed I guess. Anyway, not much to see here. Be sure and adjust your resolution and your monitor so the game displays to the correct monitor and at the right resolution! When I last tried this game on Windows, it for some reason wanted to be on my second monitor, at 1080p. This was a mistake.

If you press the 'question mark' button it brings up this window below, which I quite enjoy.







I actually tried the trick suggested here and got significantly worse frames, so I guess it depends what kind of computer you have. Best to select your real graphics card. I managed to get to the main menu on my integrated GPU and it was not a good experience! I had about 5 FPS. So you'll know very quickly if your game didn't load with your real GPU.




And here is the mods menu.

One of my favorite things about Kenshi is that the mod loader is surprisingly robust, you do NOT need Vortex, or Mod Organizer 2 or whatever to mod Kenshi! You can safely do everything via the game's in-built utility and I personally greatly prefer it! If you have a large mod list, however, you may wish to edit your load order via text editor instead, since this menu is a bit slow.

Kenshi's load order is stored in plaintext, in a .txt file called 'mods.cfg' in,
"Steam/steamapps/common/Kenshi/"

It is extremely simple to edit, you can open it with any text editor including Notepad. All you have to do is cut and paste the entries around inside the text file until they are organized the way you want, save the text document, and then click 'Refresh List' in the Kenshi UI if it's open while you're editing.

By the way, clicking 'Save Config' at the bottom of the menu, saves your alterations to mod load order or your video settings. Kenshi will also automatically save the config if you click OK and launch the game.

Anyway, with all that explained let's open up the game, so click OK and Kenshi will open.

So let's get started with: the OPTIONS menu. Overlooked by some. I think I have decided to include it in this guide because I noticed some things on starting a fresh install, and I ended up customizing them too, so I may as well mention them here, since I know some people will never open the options menu ever of their own volition.

Firstly, the general tab.


Tutorials can be turned on or off. I think if you disable them you still can view the complete list if you press F1 anyway in-game, but odds are you shouldn't need to do that. That's my job, telling you about everything here, right now!

User save location is an interesting setting. I turn it OFF. With this set to OFF, it will save your save files in the Kenshi folder. If you turn it ON, your saves will vanish off to some distant folder in your User folder on your C: drive. I just feel that keeping your saves with your Kenshi install, makes the game significantly more portable, and, Kenshi saves can get quite large if you play for a long time. I would rather just keep it all in one spot, my Kenshi folder, where the game is installed.

I would personally disable Auto save. It has been said that the Auto save system is kind of unstable and you can get corrupt save files if you use it, so I disable it altogether personally. This means you'll have to save manually, but I think that also means you have more control over your saves, so it's good. Additionally, get into the habit of making regular safety saves.

Then there's some 'show' options. You probably want all of them on, always.

Edge scrolling is so you can move the mouse to the edge of the screen to scroll. I actually turned this off since it was interfering with me taking screenshots, but I haven't needed to turn it back on, since you use WASD to control the camera. Personal preference.

Language censorship. Turn it off. You're old enough to swear if you are playing Kenshi. Speaking of, absolutely DO not let your kids play this game. Seriously. Kenshi is not kid-friendly!

Show damage floaters is nice to have at times, since, you can much more easily see details during fights. I set it to Full info.

Font size. Personal preference. Pick whatever. I have mine set to 1 at the moment.

Fast Zone Hopping. Since Kenshi is a game where you can have multiple characters, the game can and will load terrain and areas into memory so each of those characters can play the game and adventure. With Fast Zone Hopping on, the game keeps the areas all your characters are in loaded. With Fast Zone Hopping off, it only loads the area your ACTIVE character is in. So basically, turn it on if your computer is powerful enough to handle loading multiple areas in Kenshi at once, and turn it off if you're struggling for FPS already.

I don't have as much to say for this section. I will say though I strongly advise turning ON Fullscreen and ON Borderless. I don't know what changed with my performance, but it did make the game work a bit better for me on Windows, and on Linux it didn't hurt, so you may as well.

I will say though, if you have a good, modern computer, you will probably be okay with maxing out all the options in the graphics menu. I was intimidated by it for a long time because Kenshi is not the best optimized game ever, but it overall has been pleasant for me even with all view ranges cranked.

By the way, hidden at the VERY bottom of the menu, is FXAA and HeatHaze. FXAA is an antialiasing shader that smooths rough edges in the game's graphics. I usually leave it on even though I personally am also using ReShade.

HeatHaze just adds a 'heat haze' effect to distant, hot-looking areas. It's a wavy effect, so you can turn it off if you want. I leave it on, though, since it doesn't bother me.

And as for the gameplay menu. I have literally nothing to say about it since I have never changed any of the modifiers in there. A good reason for this too is that, if you do raise any of these values, you'll get bigger battles, but I guess probably harder battles too because of the extra enemies. Your performance will suffer too though, and you'll get worse framerates.

As for dismemberment, you just want to leave it on 'Rare'. Frequent means you lose limbs whenever they go below -100 HP, but the thing there is, you can actually sometimes get into situations where a limb has like completely decayed all the way to -300 and your character is otherwise in good health. It's rare but it is possible, and I don't like the idea of a limb magically popping off just because they bled out a little. And setting it to Never is a VERY bad idea because in Kenshi, limbs can be replaced with robot limbs, which are usually an upgrade.

So, keep Dismemberment set to RARE.

You might think, why is it that this needs its own section?

Well, I just wanted to highlight the fact that Kenshi, for some reason, defaults to setting the volume of all audio in the game to 0.5. This means 50% volume.

You might think, hypothetically, well perhaps this is one of the strange quirks of the game, perhaps to Kenshi, 50% volume is actually 100% volume, and changing these might set it to output game sound at 150% - but no, this is just a strange decision by the devs.

Here, I will suggest better modifiers for these sliders. Trust me, if you play with the default settings where everything is set to 50%, you'll basically never hear the UI sounds this game has, and I actually quite like them. Try it!



You should feel free to make your own adjustments of course, raising ambient or music slightly for instance.

But either way, it is best to adjust the settings here, like so.

It is I think important too that SFX be much louder than Ambient or Music, because Kenshi is already a fairly quiet game. Many sounds only really play if your camera itself is very close to the action, so you really want to hear everything when you take the time to get in close and watch a fight play out.

This is basically the entire reason I made this section, I just wanted to talk about the Audio tab because I think it is important.

I will spare you the pun on 'import' and 'important'.

Anyway.

Import Game probably is not something you will click on your first time playing Kenshi because you look at it and wonder what it might even be.

Well, simply put, 'Import Game' is a magical button that lets you fix your save file!

Whenever you add mods or remove mods or anything else strange happens, you can rest assured that 'Import Game' here WILL fix everything. In fact, it is advised to use 'Import Game' any time you add mods or remove mods. There are some mods, that do not require this. For instance, mods that are STRICTLY texture files or models or something else that is cosmetic.

However, if you install an invasive mod such as Reactive World or Living World or some such like that, a mod that changes vast amounts of game data, changing factions and character spawns and all sorts of things, then you probably want to use 'Import Game'.

Do not ever be afraid of 'Import Game'! 'Import Game' is your friend. It can fix many problems for you!

By the way, keeping the option for 'Import Buildings' or whatever else in this menu ticked and set to the ON position, means that you will keep those things during your import. So by default, you KEEP your Buildings (aka your base), you KEEP your Research, the NPCs you have killed, the faction relations.

The main reason to disable these and skip importing them, is if you want to start basically fresh with an old save.

Oh, and reset squad position basically teleports your entire squad to where your current active character is, the one you're looking at. I have never really needed to use this option, personally, but it might be helpful if you ever get a character stuck somewhere. This is not exactly common, since as I've said, I've never had to use it - but hey, at least it's there. Just in case.

Anyway, remember this menu! If you ever fear save corruption for any reason - strange crashes, memory access violations, whatever, try importing your save!

Once upon a time when Kenshi was receiving more regular updates, this menu was also useful for updating your old saves to be compatible with the new update.

Phew, finally we can start the game now that I have explained everything.

So there's a variety of starts you can select, and advanced options too. However, the advanced options section is full of game values that you probably just want to leave at default. I don't even think 'Easy prospecting' works. I don't even know if 'Bandits loot the player' works, I think disabling it might even break things, so don't touch that. Basically don't touch any of the options, really. All the defaults are pretty sane and most mods you find will likely be balanced for these default values.

I may as well post a screenshot of it though, so you know what the DEFAULT values are, and what you should NOT touch.



If you REALLY want, you could raise Building Speed and Research Speed, since those are just time gates basically and not meaningfully tied to gameplay in any way as far as I know. Production speed too, maybe.

But production speed is the only one where, actually crafting items TOO fast might be a problem because you might produce too many items, but not gain much XP from doing so. And then you might have crates and crates of items and you'll have to spend that much more time going on trips to nearby stores to sell your goods. So be wary about raising that one too high if you simply must change it.

By the light of Okran, how blessed!

Yeah, I figured this deserved its own section simply because these sections have grown pretty grey, they all look the same unfortunately, I am doing my best here. Anyway.

So, we deliberately now want to select Holy Nation Citizen. We want to select this for several reasons.

The almighty plan I have here for this walkthrough involves getting on the good side of the Holy Nation, who are surprisingly pretty cool dudes once you get to know them!

This start looks and sounds very unimpressive, it is also somewhat limited. You are forced to play a Greenlander or a Scorchlander, so if you love the Shek or Hivers, then you'll... be able to hire some later on. As for Skeletons... if you are a Skeleton lover, if you plan to roam the map and explore once done with this guide, you likely will be okay so long as you steer clear of Holy Nation territory. During the guide, we will find an opportunity to get at least one for free.

There aren't many safe zones for you to leave your Skeleton buddies during the guide either. I will point these out, later, when it becomes important.

Anyway, all that nonsense aside let me get back on topic, which is the very good reasons we are selecting this start specifically.

Firstly, this start lets us have a Wanderer-like safe start in one of the main cities of the Holy Nation. These are good cities near to where we want to go even if you spawn in Stack or Bad Teeth.

Secondly, we start with +15 Holy Nation faction reputation. This is extremely important for the walkthrough. It's necessary to reach Allied with what we're going to do in this guide.

Let's move onto the two races you can select and the options therein.

The mightiest battle of all.

VANILLA VERSUS VANILLA.

Well, I decided for this I may as well go all out, so I looked into the values in the FCS, in order to get to the heart of the matter. To truly understand both races, I had to look into the game's construction kit.

Basically, Scorchlanders are just better. Oh! Well, that wasn't very epic. But it's true, anyway.

Scorchlanders have a bleed rate of 0.9 which is 10% less than Greenlanders, they move faster at low Athletics thanks to having 80 'speed min skill' compared to the 70 of Greenlanders (you will be at low Athletics for most of this guide) and they even heal slightly faster, thanks to a heal rate of 1.1 vs the heal rate of 1.0 that Greenlanders have.

Well. I uh, I guess that settles it then! Pick a Scorchlander! And heck, for my last guide I picked Greenlander because I figured it'd be best to try with the most vanilla race possible, so we may as well vary it up with the sequel to Vanilla, Vanilla 2.

So with that, I declare...

Now you might think, well, it doesn't really matter right?

To a degree it does not, and it will be possible for your first character to be Female, if you really want, but, if you are interested in building a base (this is optional) you do need at least one Human Male for the inevitable Prayer Day. So you may as well start with one and just get that over with.

I will be playing as Scorchlander Male throughout this guide, so if you really want to copy everything I do, then you may as well play as a guy.

There are occasions after all, when you go to find recruits, that sometimes you literally find nothing but women and if you are searching specifically for a man just so when the priest comes around to your base he doesn't freak out, it can be a hassle.

Behold! Actual gameplay! Woo!

Okay, from here on out we're going to start with the actual guide now. Here, I will now tell you where to go and what to do from our humble beginning in what appears to be Bad Teeth.

With the Holy Nation Citizen start, you may spawn in Bad Teeth or Stack. They're both pretty close to one another, so it doesn't matter which you get.

Either way, we'll be heading up north very soon.

Also, you may notice you spawned with a copy of the Holy Flame in your inventory. While this may seem like a junk item, it is really for the best you hold onto it, since it lets you resolve a lot of dialogue checks with Holy Nation Paladins and such by just showing them your copy of the good book.

Off we go!

So the VERY first thing we are gonna do is just open up the map, real wide, and go look for the first checkpoint we're going to go to. Should note, since I am running RE_Kenshi, I usually travel at like x20 speed, but you may opt for lower, especially if the 'Loading' notification gets too annoying.


Let's get into the habit of making regular safety saves. I will tell you in the guide whenever you should make a safety save, I'm also going to describe visually the routes I'm taking to get where we are going by just drawing on the map here.

If you see this ring, that means I suggest making a safety save right there.

I'm just going to assume you spawned in Bad Teeth, but even if you spawned in Stack slightly to the west, the route is pretty much the same, the areas we're going to be going through on this first leg of the journey are very safe. Since we picked Scorchlander, we also have a run speed of 18 mph which is squarely enough to keep us away from most threats.



So first off, we're not even going to go to a single bar, talk to one NPC, visit a shop or even hit up the bakery for some food, we're just gonna RUN. We're just GOING.

Screw all these people! We don't need nobody, nor do we need any food! Actually, if you get VERY LUCKY, you may have a chance to find Hobbs, a unique recruit who you can recruit for free. However, the odds of him appearing here are extremely small. It's probably not worth worrying about.

Anyway, let's run. Take this dotted outline of a path I have laid out. Obviously it's pretty much just following the road for now, it's kind of a main artery that many Paladins follow, so it's a pretty safe road. Along the way you might see some farmers, who are passive toward you, some Swamp Raptors, who are basically a non-threat and are extremely unlikely to attack you.

For about 5 seconds of this journey we'll be in Skinner's Roam which can spawn extremely large herds of Hungry Bandits but we really do not care. They can appear in smaller numbers in Okran's Pride too but again we just do not care, they suck and are slower than us.

This is a pretty short trip and there's no real danger.

So, next up is the easiest part of this whole thing. We just need to walk down Wend.

Now what is Wend? It appears to be a weird river. We can walk along these odd cliffs along the side of it, and we're gonna do that because it takes far less time than swimming. It's also SIGNIFICANTLY safer than alternate routes.

There's... basically nothing to talk about with this bit because there's really no danger here. The only living things you'll find in Wend are Skeletons, but that's fine because they're extremely cool Skeletons. They're friendly and have literally no problem with letting you run past them.

I guess I can talk about the extremely rare 'Holy Nation Skeleton' event.

If you are ABSURDLY lucky, it is possible to recruit one of the Skeletons you find in Wend. The situation has to be very specific though. First, the Skeleton needs to have stats low enough that he is flagged as recruitable. This is already a hurdle since the Skeletons here are decently strong. Then, you need to also encounter him while playing as any race that is not a Skeleton. If that's not enough, the Skeleton also needs to be the only member of his squad.

If you have found a Skeleton that IS recruitable, then he'll say something along the lines of, "Do what you will with me, Human..."

And even THEN you have to basically take the right dialogue path with him where you tell him you hate the Holy Nation. Just do not pick 'I just like helping people'.

Anyway, I am going to assume you didn't get a free Skeleton recruit here because it's very unlikely. Moving on!

I sure hope there are no cannibals down there.

Time for our first real safety save. By the way, when you make these, I hope you are sure to make a new save every time. I have read Kenshi is not good at overwriting saves very well which can lead to corruption.

My naming conventions tend to be a short word or a random 4 letters, like qwer1 or asdf1 or holy1 and then I just increment the number every time. Works out for me.



We take kind of a weird route here, but the main goal is to basically get out of 'The Hidden Forest' here as quickly as possible. The Floodlands is also pretty dangerous, but we're going to be basically visiting parts of it that should be relatively safe.

It is actually entirely possible to die here, hence I suggest you make a safety save before we start this run to 'Unknown Tower'.

The title of this chapter by the way is relevant.

There's some water in the Floodlands. Water is basically your archnemesis because as soon as you enter water your movement slows to a crawl. There are even some enemies, like the ones in the Floodlands, that can attack you WHILE you are swimming! Basically, avoid swimming at any cost here.

"There in the rain was a man. A Skeleton. He seemed a bit melancholic - quite typical of their kind."

So here we finally meet our first recruit! Burn.

And unfortunately he's a Skeleton. And we're about to become best friends with the one faction in the game that HATES Skeletons more than anyone.

This is one of the first dialogues we have to take very carefully. Kind of.

Basically, walk up to this guy once you reach Burn's Tower, right click on him to begin dialogue. In case you're clicking on all these, like any old western RPG you can select dialogue choices by just pressing the number keys.

It's very difficult to actually fail this dialogue if you go off-script, so feel free to chat to him, so long as you're not outwardly hostile Burn is pretty chill and shouldn't attack, but if you want to be safe, here's a spoiler with the easiest choices.

1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. Yes, really.

So, now we have access to Burn's Tower, and our first recruit!



And here's the tower. This place is actually pretty safe. Since it doesn't count as player ownership, no one will ever come raid you here. That might not sound like much, but it's just a really nice thing to remember that you can come back to the tower here any time you are somewhere in the top left of the map to just chill, recover HP, and if you have Skeletons or robot limbs, you can repair them at the Skeleton bed here for free.

Now for the fun bonus. LOOT! Yes, you can and should loot every container you find here. The containers may be red, but it doesn't really count as stealing since Burn is your best friend now. He certainly won't care.



Here is an example of the loot I just pulled out of there. I just did another quick run to confirm and got pretty much the same loot. I think 'Fuujin' might be wealthier since Burn came with a nearly full repair kit and I found a power core instead of a robotics component.

If you are wondering the value of any of this junk... well, I have just the guide for you.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2951322558
Anyway, so out of that we pulled out around 23,000 cats value in loot alone... and this is just the beginning.

There is in fact a village over there. And we're gonna go straight there! Multiple reasons, of course. That's the beauty of this route, we can multitask at almost every juncture. At Burn's Tower we get loot, some money and a cool Skeleton friend, and then at this Village we're going to get something friends, and a chance to pick up some food, hopefully some medicine too. Humans don't get repaired up very well by Skeleton Repair Kits.

Before we go anywhere though, make sure you have set a couple things on the UI.

To the left is a 'sprinting man' icon. This means characters you have selected (press ` aka tilde/grave to select everyone in your squad) will SPRINT as fast as they possibly can.
The jogging man icon on the right, indicates that all your selected characters will move at the same speed as your SLOWEST character. This means your party will ALWAYS travel as a tight group.

So naturally, you should probably leave it on the 'jogging man with a shadow' icon and mostly forget about it. Do keep in mind however that every time you recruit a new character, you'll need to adjust this setting for them too, since new recruits always default to 'sprint'.

Additionally, once we reach this next town, there will be an NPC who wishes to engage in dialogue. Check chapter 4.6 below to complete the dialogue safely.



This is a very straightforward trek. You can already see, it's basically a straight line, which is really fantastic honestly. However, take note once again of the water and how you want to take that landbridge back the way you came into Floodlands.

And once again, make a safety save at Burn's Tower, just in case. On one of my runs in testing out this walkthrough I did get attacked on this leg of the journey. It was not even a problem because I made it to the village we're going to, and the guards took care of the problem for me. My guy only sustained minor injuries, but it just goes to show that the enemies here can surprise you.

So, after a hopefully not too dangerous stroll with our new best friend we come upon this lovely, scenic little town.

However, unfortunately, we have to deal with this lowly gate guard.



So here's a VERY important dialogue. There's two ways to complete this. One is a little more difficult, and involves you using your starter character, an easier route however is to just talk to this gate guard with Burn.

Yes, you get different dialogue, depending on whom you use as your 'party face'.

So let's just click Burn in the UI, select him, and then right click on this lady.

Spoilers for the quickest, safest dialogue choices below:

1, 1, 1, 1, as Burn. Yep, really.

By the way if you really want to talk things through with your 'Holy Citizen' man:

1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. Yeah. No comment.

So now we're safely inside a real town. This is the perfect chance to offload all our delicious loot. Sell everything. You may want to sell Burn's half-used Repair Kit and give him a full one to hold onto, those things last an absurdly long time.

By the way, because I am sure people will want to immediately explore, and talk to everyone... there is one NPC you should avoid speaking to. Her name is Moll, she is easy to find because she is the only NPC here with Diplomatic Status (so noted above her name.)

Do NOT speak to Moll yet. We will eventually talk to her during chapter 4.8 of this guide.

If you are curious about the shops here, there's a Bar, which just sells food basically and other misc junk, and an Armory, that sells weapons, medkits for some reason, blueprints, and some clothes. We don't really care about most of this stuff.

I do recommend you pick up some Tools. One is enough. Tools can be used for unlocking any lock. Check the armory, I found two, and bought one.

I would not recommend bothering with buying weapons or anything else. The vendors were selling me Rag Skirts which reduce athletics, this sucks super bad, if Burn is still wearing his by the way just sell it now. Losing even 1 mph from our run speed could actually mean life or death, we do not want to be tanking hits at all right now if we can help it.

So after selling everything, buying a first aid kit, and a couple Foodcubes for my Human who laughably needs to eat, I was left with a pretty generous 28,038 cats. So yeah. That's cool. Granted, you may wish to mentally subtract about 3,000 for what we're about to do here.

First, you have to decide what you want to do with Burn. We're about to trek back to Holy Nation territory once we're done here. So... do you want to keep this guy with you? It'll require a lot more micromanaging. It would be a shame to waste him, though. Take note that Burn has around 15 in every stat that matters, which is a lot better than most generic recruits.

Remember Burn's Tower? If you want you could actually just send him back there, put him in his own little squad from the Squads menu, and then just forget about him until you need him again. Or you could just micromanage him really hard, keeping him in stealth and hidden at all times from Holy Nation folks while your Holy Citizen does all the chores.

This is because Holy Nation people hate Skeletons so much that they either flee on sight or attack on sight.

Either way, I recommend you don't use Burn for what we are about to do.

See that over there? That's Moll. I hear she has, for some unknown reason, one of the most absurd stat blocks in the game.
It's NOT even remotely a joke!

120 DEXTERITY???

The real takeaway here, anyway, is that this lady can vaporize you in a single attack and she'll do it VERY fast if you cross her. So we're going to cross her! Yes, really. Not yet though.

Do not speak to Moll yet. Under no circumstances are you to speak to her yet.

At the Flotsam Village here, there should be four recruits, at least, all unique recruits. These are in order from best to worst.

Firstly, is Pia. She is actually worthy of consideration for hiring just for her skills, she has around 50 athletics, and decent stats otherwise. She only costs 3,000 cats, too. I actually do recommend you recruit her, since with that speed she'll probably be faster than you, and she probably has better strength than your wimpy starter guy as well! So let's say we're mentally at 22,000 cats, down from 25,000.

Secondly, is Knife. So right upfront, she costs 6,000 cats. So what do you get from this? Well, she has better stats to start with than most, around 8-10 points in most things on average. Nothing special otherwise. You can pick her up if you really want but it's probably not worth it.

Thirdly, is Reva. Reva also unfortunately costs 6,000 cats. You probably do not want to hire her because she has worse stats than Knife. Not much else to say.

Fourthly, however, and at the bottom of the list for these unique recruits, is Digna. Digna is terrible at everything. She only costs 3,000, but that means she costs the same amount as a regular generic recruit, and has the same stats as one too.

I also had two generic recruits spawn, they can have random names. One was called Wish and the other Slowline.

Now comes the epic BETRAYAL part of this chapter.



Unfortunately for her, Digna drew the short straw.

I am selecting her because she comes with some nice Wooden Sandals. You might not think so, but surprisingly these are one of the best boots in the game. Purely because they give you a bonus to your Athletics. Put these on your main guy so he's even faster.

You don't really care if Burn gets downed for being too slow, because Burn is a Skeleton and the enemies we'll be seeing during our next journey simply do not care about Skeletons, so he'll get downed then will be left completely alone. This will give him or someone else the chance to repair him and he'll be good as new.

And this is only if you are taking Burn with you, by all means do as I suggested earlier and send him away to Burn's Tower to just idle. Perfectly acceptable. I am going to assume from now on you are either microing Burn to keep him away from Holy Nation patrols and soldiers, or he is not with your main party.

Put Digna, or one of the generic recruits that cost 3,000 cats into a new Squad using the Squad menu. You can name it 'Short Straw' if you want, like I have. Drag her over there.

Anyway. Now that we have our little party...



Let's continue onward.

Over here is 'something good'. You can safely leave behind your Short Straw squad, whoever it is, inside the Flotsam Village. Ominously, we aren't going to be seeing much more of them for the rest of this playthrough. So let's run down here.

As before, mind the various dangerous enemies in The Hidden Forest. At this point you may notice your 'main guy' whom you started this playthrough with is probably kind of bad at going fast, especially if he's weighed down. Do your best to make sure he is at least going 18 mph. Pia will easily exceed this. The sandals will help.

Anyway, this is not a very dangerous sprint, once you're out of the forest and crossing the landbridge, you're basically safe. If there are enemies near to the village, you could always lure them in for the ninjas to kill for you!

So the Flotsam Ninjas made a little bit of a mistake in putting a whole bunch of free stuff here in this house, and we are going to, uh, liberate all of these fine goods for the glory of Okran. We ARE secretly agents of the Phoenix after all, right? That's my headcanon anyway.

There's not a lot of money to be made here really, this location isn't just full of loot, but there's some decent starter gear here basically including Ninja Rags, medical supplies, and a ton of food. I found a Ninja Blade in the weapon cabinet, and gave that to Pia, which means I have a crew that looks something like this now.

By the way, take note of the Drifter's Leather Pants and Rattan Hat. These have one property that is uncommon in a lot of gear, it gives acid resistance. Prioritize this for now, since you'll get some use out of it soon. If you can't find a lot, or any though, that's okay. Even 20% from the hat alone is good enough for our purposes.

Skeletons are innately 100% acidproof, so no leather pants for Burn.

Also, to get into the weapon cabinet I had to use those tools from earlier.

There's a strategy with tools you can use where, once the timer on it reaches a relatively low number, say 50, you can order your character using the tools to stop. Then, you can use a character with a large Strength stat to 'Use Strength' on the lock. This will shatter the lock open, and you get to keep your tools! This is sort of an oversight, not a bug, and it's up to you whether you want to abuse it or not, but me personally I am all for making use of it.



So, now that we've successfully infiltrated, traded with, and stolen recruits and supplies from the Flotsam Ninjas, it's time to enact our final, devilish plan.

With your squad safely chilling at the safehouse, we can now - FINALLY - talk to Moll.

So jump over to Short Straw squad with your sacrificial lamb, now walk over to Moll (she is in the HQ building) and say anything in response to her first dialogue choice. Then say, 'Can I join the Flotsam Ninjas?' which should be dialogue option 2.

Now, we select option 2 again.

2 being, "I swear my allegiance to the Phoenix! (-75 Flotsam relations)"

And this is the whole reason why we selected the Holy Citizen start, as well as why we chose to mess with the Flotsam Ninjas.



While selecting the above dialogue choice DOES lower your relations with the Flotsam Ninjas, you gain +50 with the Holy Nation, pushing you up to 65 reputation with them and making you an ally. This is a Very Good Thing. For several reasons. But let's talk about why you do NOT care about making the Flotsam Ninjas mad.

Firstly, I don't know what radius they can raid people in, but it doesn't seem to be very large.

Secondly, their raids are not going to be very strong, their ninjas may have OK, middling, average stats, but they have pretty bad equipment. So it'll be like being harassed by the Black Dragon Ninjas but maybe slightly more or less dangerous, hard to say. And because the Flotsam have lopsided stats with high attack but low defense, Flotsam probably die more easily.

Thirdly, because they are only really even located in one zone in the game that you don't really any reason to ever visit again after we're done with our little trick here, becoming their enemy is not really a big deal.

The only immediate issue, is that WHOEVER it was you gave the task of speaking to Moll, is likely going to be one-shot, instantly, as soon as the dialogue ends. This is why we had to basically recruit some unlucky soul to deliver the bad news.

Anyway, now that we've done all that, let's keep going. Onward, to our TRUE objective.

Take roughly this route here. Save before you leave the safehouse - though this is yet another relatively safe journey, I have once gone through this area and been surprised, then killed by a bonedog. It was pretty sad.



Off we go, to Narko's Trap!

Feel free to stop by Blister Hill if you like. You may note that the guards don't even ask to check your bags now. I don't think they even bother when you're allied with them, in my experience at least. You can buy some stuff here, or pick up some recruits, or whatever you want really. The game has already kind of started to open up now, since we have money and a plan.

You may be well-served by purchasing 1 or 2 Wooden Backpacks at Blister Hill, because we're about to pick up a bunch of loot and it'd cut down on the amount of trips we have to make if we can put a bunch of stacking items inside backpacks instead. Look for the Trader's Wooden Backpack at the 'Boot Shop' in Blister Hill. I found like four, but it isn't guaranteed obviously. Take note that the combat penalties ARE severe, so remember to unequip these during combat.

You also may also ask, why not any of the other backpacks? Well, basically they all suck except the Large Backpack (sheer inventory size is huge) and the Thieves Backpack, which is arguably the best backpack in the game, but you're probably not gonna find that one any time soon since those are rare. The Wooden Backpacks also can stack many items. We're about to pick up a bunch of stacking items, so this serves us well.

The next chapter will continue on from when we reach Narko's Trap.

"Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory."

So, finally we have reached our destination. What is this place? Well, if you look around you'll probably get the gist. It sure seems as if the Paladins here basically, like apes, cordoned off and blocked off this ancient lab from the rest of the world. It seems to me as if they probably unsealed it, unleashed a horde of security spiders that promptly decimated them, so in retaliation they decided it must have been the work of Narko and put walls up around the whole thing.

By the way, remember when I told you to grab some acid-resistant gear? This is why. We're not going to be out in the acid rain for very long, and it's really not all that damaging anyway, but if you can grab a Rattan Hat or whatever earlier to just lower the overall damage we'll take, then it's well worth grabbing.

Now, normally, if you are Neutral or worse with the Holy Nation, I believe they attack you here on sight. However, if you are Allied with them, which we are now thanks to having 65 faction relations with them, then instead... they literally don't give the slightest care for what you do here.

To the point where, you can even just unseal it right in front of the Paladins. They don't care.
So that's what we're gonna do.



Yeah.

So anyway, now we're in. Once you go up the ramp, to the entrance of Narko's Evil Tower you'll probably find that there's a couple of security spiders left. You may wish to toggle Stealth on your characters just so you know if the spiders here are aware of you or not. Hopefully not.

Step into the bottom floor of the tower, and immediately click through the floors, and find how many spiders there are throughout the building. I don't know if it's a set number, but it'll probably be a similarly low number for you either way. I only saw 2.

The best way to deal with these guys, is to simply aggro them, then pull them all the way to the bottom of the tower where you can feed them to the hungry Paladins outside. Don't feel bad for it either, the Paladins LIVE for slaughtering Skeletons and the like, so this is giving them a chance to do what they've trained for all their lives. You're doing them a favor!

You can lure them one by one, which is probably safest, or try and get in and harass all of the spiders and pull them out all at once. Up to you!

You can use the Stealth indicator here too in order to know when you've definitely drawn aggro. The spiders seem to have a patrol route of going up and down the tower from time to time, so keep that in mind.

Once the spiders are dealt with, you're free to loot the place. The top floor has a wall just COVERED in crates and while not all of them have loot, just keep that in mind there are a TON of containers AND tons of loose loot that's often quite valuable. Look for CPU Units, Skeleton Muscles (search the dead spiders for muscles too by the way), and loose Power Cores.

Once all is said and done, you should have something that looks a bit like this.



So let's do some maths. I am just gonna average these out, disregarding mark-up value. Also, I think I still had 1 or 2 repair kits left over from earlier, so let's not include those, let's just pretend I gave a couple to my good friend Burn to keep.

• 3x A.I. Cores c.75,000
  
• 16x CPU Unit c. 96,000
  
• 10x Skeleton Repair Kit c. 40,000
  
• 7x Power Core c. 21,000
  
• 6x Robotics Component c. 18,000
  
• 6x Generator Core c. 18,000
  
• 13x Ancient Science Book c. 65,000
  
• 2x Engineering Research c. 18,000
  
• Holy Nation Tax c. 0
  
• Total - c. 351,000

Add in the 20,000-ish cats we still have (unless you already picked up some recruits and so on), and we now have nearly 400,000 cats to play within the first in-game week. The only challenge now is to actually figure out how to even sell all these items.

By the way - you may think:

"So wait hold on, do you really suggest selling AI Cores!? And Engineering Research, and Ancient Science Books? But you need those for advanced technology research!"

This is true. However, you must remember that you just started the game, and first you have many many many many other pressing issues. These items too CAN all be purchased later from certain vendors. There are also many more items in the game world for you to find later as well. Because all of these items sell for the same value they are purchased at, as well, you are basically exchanging your solid items for liquid cash. And right now, that's way more valuable.

You can invest all that money into recruits, some basic equipment (do not go overboard, Edgewalkers quality weapons won't help you right now all that much), and so on. You're even best friends with the Holy Nation.

And this is also pretty much where the guide ends.

"I think... we're gonna be okay."

So there you have it.

You've got all the means to succeed. The rest is up to you. The only question is... what now? Well, let me make a few suggestions.

Why not put that money to use and invest it into yourself? Well, unfortunately we can't directly put money into our body, but we can invest in good defensive gear, and good weapons.

The goal here would be not strength for its own sake however - we have a score to settle, don't we? That's right.

Moll.

So hey, why not focus on that? We already made her mad. Why not grow stronger, and follow the natural progression of events? We have a clear idea of the strength of our enemy. All that we need now, is a squad. We need soldiers with good equipment, good weapons, good armor, good skills and training to defeat the Flotsam Ninjas. It'll take a fair while, but that's what makes it a good goal to strive for, right?

Why let all the big dogs have all the fun? You should be more than wealthy enough to leave your mark on the world of Kenshi, now.

You're more than wealthy enough to attract (or hire) followers. You can start small, as nothing more than a little farm, then gradually build up and up until you're building a bastion that rivals the greatest citadels of the three major powers.

Now, I would love to link the guide I wrote on base-building, but I haven't written it yet. If I do eventually write it, I will link to it here:

If you speak to The Phoenix at 75 faction rep, something good happens. He basically actually talks to you (make sure you use a man to speak to him) and gives you some cool items.

Now, how do you go about getting the last few points? How about becoming a bounty hunter? There's a few random bounties out there that are wanted by The Holy Nation. You get 2 points if you claim a bounty reward, and you get 5 points if you turn in a bounty without asking for a reward.

This means, you only need to turn in two bounties. You can also basically cheese this by just finding random Hungry Bandits and such guilty of committing crimes and just turn those guys in for the same faction reputation reward, no matter how small the actual value of their bounty is.

It's worth trying just to see what you get, I think.

I might take this opportunity to showcase I mod I made. This mod adds an inventory icon for one of the items The Phoenix can give you. Surprisingly, it does not have an icon at all in vanilla Kenshi, so I figured I would mod one in. I strongly suggest you pick this up because it will fit any mod list without conflicting, and it will save you sanity points when you are looking for this 'seal' item and it is a strange blank 1x1 slot square in your inventory that is almost invisible.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3483737128

Do you at all feel more interested in exploring the world of Kenshi now? There's plenty more to see and do, after all.

Plenty more weird creatures to find, fight, and be killed by.

Every zone in the game has at least something interesting about it, after all. There's plenty of loot to be found, too. If you haven't at least explored the four corners of the game, then you really should spend more time adventuring.

Though you really want to leave the bottom right corner of the map for lategame, you can try adventuring to the northeast, the northwest, and the southwest in relative safety!

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2951812219
Why not, right?

Where this guide ends is relatively close to where the other guide starts, sort of. Just head on over to The Hub and go for it. One of the weaknesses of the 2.0 guide, as I mentioned earlier, is that Narko's Trap offers a lot in terms of monetary value. However, you don't get access to a lot of high quality armor or weapons. We are at the end here basically wearing kind of middling ninja gear.

You could therefore try this other guide of mine, it'll show you where some useful weapons and armor can be found. Give it a try!

"Oh come all you young fellers, so young and so fine
And seek not your fortune, in the dark dreary mine!
It'll form as a habit, and seep in your soul,
‘Til the stream of your blood, runs as black as the coal."

This section exists as a joke. This is an example of what NOT to do.

I've heard many apologists for the omnipresent copperbelt gameplay, where you just walk over to the copper, mine the copper, carry the copper, sell the copper to vendor, and then go back to mining the copper again.

However, I can't recommend it, for many reasons.

Firstly, it is dull as ditchwater. I also believe many a new player has been told of this strategy without also being told of things such as 'ore quality'. It's for this reason I think new players being told to mine copper is so damaging because, they frequently aren't told everything, and then go off and find a 20% quality copper node that basically only yields a single piece every few minutes and then they go away miserable.

Secondly, the myths of it being 'efficient' for gaining money, are obviously inaccurate given how quickly I have shown in this guide you can pick up money, that is sitting around the game world, with almost ZERO risk. Even copper is risky, you have to leave the safety of town to do it, and if bandits happen across you while you're mining, what are you gonna do, laden down with copper? Drop it all out of your pockets and run?

Thirdly, the myths of it 'raising your stats effectively' are also inaccurate. Yes, if you do run around while carrying a load of copper, odds are you will gain some strength. However, you're missing a key component of Strength training which involves picking up and carrying another character, alive or dead. Carrying other characters gives you up to +25% Strength XP gain and possibly much more if you are weak enough.

Simply being encumbered sufficiently gives you a scaling 1-25% Strength XP gain, up to a cap of 25% and it stacks with the bonus for carrying someone. This means, you really want to be carrying someone, while having a heavy load. And wouldn't you know it, this actually frequently aligns with an adventurer's playstyle, because when your friends get downed, you can carry them until they wake up or emerge from their recovery coma, while carrying around tons of loot.

I guarantee you, just following this guide without even thinking about raising your stats at all, probably gained you a few levels in Strength just from all the running around carrying things we did.

So in conclusion, never mine copper solely for the 'pleasure' of 'making money'. It's awful!

With all that said, I bid you goodnight, goodbye, see you again.

Apologies this thing grew to such a length. It's about 10,000 words I believe.

May we meet again in the next guide.