Steam Community :: Guide :: Kenshi Objective Guide (WIP)

Store Page

Kenshi

All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos Workshop News Guides Reviews

Kenshi > Guides > Reignswolf's Guides

277 ratings

Kenshi Objective Guide (WIP)

By Reignswolf

This guide is to help new players have a starting goal and sense of progression.

Kenshi can be a confusing game when you're just beginning and hopefully with this guide you can see it as somewhat of a "Quest marker" type guide and tick off things as you go. Of course, you can always play your own way, but if you want a general direction - read on!

I'm in no way an expert player so experienced players can take this with a grain of salt. Everyone has their own play style and this is what I've found works for me. This will state things I wish I knew about, and things that have helped me immensely in beginning my Kenshi journey. ;)

Award

Created by

Reignswolf
Online

Category: Gameplay Basics, Walkthroughs

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

23 Apr, 2019 @ 12:15am

4 Nov, 2021 @ 1:57pm

28,808	Unique Visitors
550	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Starting out in Kenshi / Basics of Kenshi

Unit Functions

Base Building & Progression

Different Ways to Earn Money

Comments

Starting out in Kenshi / Basics of Kenshi

If you would like, you may use this as sort of "in-game objective."
I understand these types of games are meant to be played your own way, but sometimes learning the mechanics on your own in a punishing game like this can be... pretty annoying.

STEP 1: Money

Create your character.
The differences for each start is outlined in the description.
Let's assume you pick the "Wanderer" for this play-through.
When you start, your main concern will be money, "cats." The easiest way I've found to get money is to take your character out of town, look for a Copper Node. You do not need a pick axe prior to harvesting the Node, you have one automatically. There are 2 types of nodes, a small node will only allow you to use 1 character to farm it. A normal node will allow you to use 2 characters thus yielding more resources faster.
When you've found a node, you can click on it with your character and he will start using his/her pick axe on it. You'll notice the copper isn't going in your inventory... You'll have to left click on the Node and open the Node's inventory. Each node can only hold 5 before you have to place it in your inventory, otherwise they will stop farming it - to fix this you can SHIFT CLICK on the node while having a character selected to assign it as a job. This way when you empty the node of the Copper they will automatically start mining again.
Selling:
Once you finally have a decent amount of Copper to sell, head to any Trader within a city. You can hold ALT to make signs visible to you. You can sell it at any vendor who has money. They should go for about 180 Cats for each piece of ore.

Shadow Wolf:
Once you have some money you can also hire Mercenaries to protect your while you farm for money, level up your characters, recruit from different cities or build a base.
Now that we have some money....
There's 2 things you can do.
1. Recruit some more units into your group. The more people you have, the more you can farm and also protect yourself from bandits. You shouldn't recruit anyone for more than 3000 Cats at the beginning as money is harder to come by.
2. After recruiting some units, 1 or 2, depends on how much of a haul you made... you can hold ALT and find a sign with a person with a backpack on, or a general trader. You'll want to pick up some backpacks for your people so they can hold more Copper.
3. If you get lucky, you may run into an animal trader early on. Make sure you buy a Pack Bull, or another carrying beast so they can hold all your material.
4. NOTE: You'll want to go to a variety of cities if you're to find a lot of recruits. Which may not be worth it right away since your group is going to be very weak. Save this until later.
This can be your main source of income, and in my play-through was. Well later into the game.

Unit Functions

STEP 2: Unit Basics

Combat:
Combat is one of those things where you'll just have to tough it out. At first, you'll be luring bandits to the Cities because you're too weak to defend yourself. Scavenge their bodies and outfit your group. Your main priority at this point will be getting a large group and a decent amount of money.
If you have access to it... You can train your group at Training Dummies. Be wary though, MkI dummies will only train their skills up to level 5. ** CheekiComrade: You can access MKII and MKIII training dummies throughout the world, most common is the MKIII ones found in police stations or faction barracks. **
Conditions:
When you're in a fight you will suffer damages. You can lose arms and legs, and bleed on every part of your body. The most common is bleeding, you can fix this by buying a medical kit. I suggest having one on every squad member.

After a battle, click on the Medic button at the bottom right of your screen. Your units will automatically bandage any wounded ally. If you lose a limb, you'll need to seek out the Hive people, or a wandering Hive trader to purchase a prosthetic. Be wary though, the Holy Nation DOES NOT like prosthetic arms or legs and sees them as "unclean." They will attack you on site if you are wearing one. You do not need a prosthetic but you will not be able to carry a unconscious group member if you don't possess 2 arms.

Unconscious allies will recover automatically if they are not bleeding to death. You can quicken this immensely by picking up said ally and bringing them to a BAR and lay them in bed for a while.

Base Building & Progression

STEP 3: Progression

After gathering funds and purchasing additional group members, you may add buying Building Materials to your everyday purchases. You'll want to gather as many as you can fit in your inventory. This will be how you will build your base.
Finding the ideal location;
The way I did this was find a set of Copper Nodes not far from eachother and build around them. You can start by building a Research Bench and a Small Shack. You'll have to open the Building Menu, which you can do so by pressing B, or clicking on it at the bottom right of your screen. You can press the "." or "," buttons to rotate the item you choose to build. The research bench will require books in which it consumes to teach you new things to craft after you research them.
Fundamentals:
After you're set up, you'll want to make Stone Mine and the required building to convert the stone into Building Materials. If you assign your squad members to these tasks with SHIFT click, they will work on it automatically. Remember, they will only hold 5 items, you will want to build a Storage box specifically for said item. Example, "Building Material Storage." This will hold all of your building supplies until it's maximum. Your squad members will continuously fill it through production until it's full. Your squad members will also automatically pick up the materials from the box when they have a project they're assigned to building. When you SHIFT click on an item to be built it will assign the person with the "Engineer" job. They will then complete any projects you have pending building.
Building Materials will be your most important resource to building your base early on. As everything requires building materials; walls, buildings, etc. Once you have a production of these, you can start making production of Iron Sheets, you can do so by building a Iron Refinery (Manual), this will make it so if you find a Iron Node you can assign some 1 or 2 workers to it (depending on the node size) and they will automatically bring the Ore back to the Refinery. The manual refinery requires about 3 workers to run good. They will automatically convert the Ore to Iron Sheets, which you can use to build other buildings.

Rinse and Repeat:

Once you've got yourself a sweet little base, have gathered more members to your squad, have a steady income and can somewhat defend yourself after the various encounters by now. You'll, if not already, want to explore. You can find maps on vendors which are very useful to buy and consume to uncover locations around you. You'll want to go to a variety of cities if you're to find a lot of recruits. To get the best out of your base, you'll want to find a book named "Advanced Science" this will teach you the best buildings you can make.

End-Game Goal...

Here's a few end-game goals you can have:

Make a large City, the best in the Kenshi world.
Train your squad to be incredibly strong and take over outposts through the Kenshi world.
Wipe out all bandit camps and outposts.
Make your squad a wandering Nomad group. Don't make a permanent base but instead put up tents and sleeping beds when your people are wounded. You can make money mining outside of towns and selling the resources.
Join a faction and kill their enemies.
YungNa$tyy: Collect all Meitou weapons. (Highest Grade Weapons in the game)

Different Ways to Earn Money

WORK IN PROGRESS.

Since a couple of different people have commented on ways to make money, here are a few ways you can earn money in Kenshi.

Earning Money

Mining Copper Ore and selling to to Vendors for 185 Cats per piece.
Click on NPC's to see if they have a Bounty on their head. Knock them out in combat and bring their unconscious body to the nearest Police Station to cash in on their Bounty.
DasCorncakes:
Killing random Bandits and selling their gear at the Cities.
Sell slaves to United Cities. (Download Slave Mod)
Set up a shop in a town by buying a house and making a Trader Stall.
Stealing from shops after nightfall.
Dr. Hook:
If you're a human and spawn at the hub, you can travel to Okran's Valley to the North and collect River Raptor hide from dead River Raptors. The Holy Nation patrols often kill them near the waters. You can also collect from Bonedogs.

Pixie Garfunkel:
There's a Holy Farm north of Stack (north of the Hub) that has a storage building.
It's unguarded and is a good source of starters Cats for a beginner.

Stellar Fox:
If you start as Hive, you can run through the Fog Lands to Mongrel. Once you get to Mongrel you can wait for the guards to kill princes and sell their heads for Cats.

Fred the Undead:
make your way to The Hub. Then travel to Vain. Yes, Vain. From The Hub, the closest part of Vain has a Hive Village nearby. If you are lucky, a Nest of Gorillo or Beak Things are nearby. Hide inside one of the "Hive Burrows" and wait. Wait for the Hive to encounter a Beak Thing or two, have them kill it (Or be killed) and loot the bodies. If you see a Beak Thing get knocked out, rush forward and take any part of the Beak Thing, killing it instantly.

Beak Things drop 5-6 Leather which in turn can be sold for about 1200 Cats, and the of meat they drop, some of it is edible. Or all of it if you are Hive.

R00K,Cox Maddox & Autism is Unstoppable
At the Hive village that's close to that Rebel Outpost in the Border Zone, there are sometimes a bunch of Beak Thing nests around there. Occasionally a large group will wander in to the village, and attack the Hivers. Letting the Hive drones kill the Beak things for you is a good way to generate some starting cash from animal skins.

Also you can run through beak thing nests to draw them to the hive village, then run back in and grab the eggs. Super fun way to make cats.

Sometimes beak things spawn at Catun and if you can make the dangerous journey there, they are basically constantly killing them every day.

Paper Red
1) Buy a shack, research up to Leather crafting.
2) Build a leather armorer's bench and storage for fabric & leather, storage for armor, torch for light
3) Hire some random guy and give him food, leave him in the shack to make Traders Leathers indefinitely.
4) Keep the supply of fabric/leather steady
5) Profit and wind up with a maxed out armor smith in the process.

Mr_Chode
Another good way to make cats is buying all the hash from the small settlements in the swamp, then run over to the Flats Lagoon and sell it all there. It sells for a 400-500% mark up.

62 Comments

< >

Reignswolf [author] 12 Jan, 2023 @ 1:04pm

@Cuppaslugs
I think I've used that same Copper Node, it's a good spot!
I don't think anyone else has mentioned it either.

cuppaslugs 12 Jan, 2023 @ 2:22am

oh and also, a copper spot that i find to be the most profitable, at least early on, is the one just north east of the entrance to the Shien. it's a node that allows two people too mine at it, then just run straight back down into Shien and sell up. if bandits come and you have no protection? then try to run down to the shek guards at the NE entrance of the shien. They'll really help out. rinse and repeat.
dont forget to loot the bodies too, even though the gear will probably be base level dust bandit stuff it'll sell for something at least.

cuppaslugs 12 Jan, 2023 @ 2:18am

ive been doing everything in this playthrough up until day 56 and it's worked an absolute charm, even my shek are at labour skill 70 and above. Copper mining is a great source of income.

Barnabas Ballins 31 Jul, 2022 @ 7:27am

end slavery? hell nah, imma be the best slave owner on kenshi

ROBINO 12 Jun, 2022 @ 4:02am

Endgame objectives are lacking in the Kenshi. There's so many things they could have done for little effort. I'm hoping there will be more meaningful diplomacy and deeper overall plots and characters in Kenshi 2.

AnimeTiddyFan 22 May, 2022 @ 5:55pm

I haven't played too long but seems like ending slavery would be one of most people's best end goals.
If slavery is completely unavoidable, maybe I'd go for making the worst slavers etc. the new slaves.

TheCrimsonKike 29 Jan, 2022 @ 6:02am

Step 1: Play Skeleton
Step 2: Profit

Frission 24 Jan, 2022 @ 9:00am

Perhaps add a bit to the base building section about feeding your army. I've found it to be a bit tricky, especially with swamp raptors constantly trying to get at my crops.

Kagome 20 Jan, 2022 @ 9:14am

As soon as I had a big enough wheat farm to feed my army automatically using bread, I would periodically send all my soldiers that had bounties to hunt down samurai patrols in the great desert, United cities squads field Samurai conscripts, Samurai, Sergeants or captains, and each carry weapons that are worth 1000-2000 cats by themselves, Weapons like people have said here take up very little room, and with enough backpacks you can do this for some time.

Now not everyone wants fight with the United Cities, Especially early on, but I found that war was extremely profitable.

renomint 15 Jan, 2022 @ 1:42pm

I decided to free the world of slavery as an end game......still trying......

< >