Literally every time I’ve tried to play Kenshi it’s just been trying to mine enough rocks to afford a single meal and then getting slaughtered by the first thing with hostile intent that passes by, beating my entire crew unconscious and then continuing to beat them until they’re dead.

I’m told characters get better at fighting by fighting but there seems to be no organic way to do it and you have to refer to the wiki and cheese it and use meta-knowledge to get anywhere

Maybe I approached the game wrong but I found it to be very disappointing

If you start with the default package (one team member, minimal wealth), you’ll probably have to spend a lot of time mining or doing otherwise menial tasks before you have enough cash to start a settlement. If you want to get right into the base-building, there’s no shame in picking the base starter package (six team members, pack beast, enough supplies for some basic buildings).

When picking a base site, look for intersections between two biomes. This doubles your crop options once you start farming.

Build and expand walls early on. Wildlife and bandit attacks are incessant, but they generally ignore walls. You can lock your team inside buildings in an emergency, which tends to dissuade attackers.

Don’t be afraid to save scum. The world is DANGEROUS at first, and it’s not unreasonable to give yourself a second chance if you get steamrolled by a random encounter you couldn’t have known to prepare for.

Once you build a cash reserve, visit each town to get more crafting plans. There are also many unique NPC’s looking to join up, who start with bonuses to certain skills and stats.

Build a kill-box lined with mounted guns around the main entrance to your base.

Learn the basics of combat via training dummies and assisting town guards while they repel bandit attacks. Stay near guards until you’ve toughened up a bit.

Once your base is established, imprison enemy units and keep them healed and fed. They make for great sparring partners for your advanced team members.

Beep!

First focus on mining. First get a backpack, then buy a small house and automate the mining. This increases you strength and atleticism. Alowing you to outtrun those you cant beat.

Steal equipment from the people the guards beat up.

You may or may not want to get a helper. I honestly recommend against it because having to many of em makes it very easy later on and there are some with unique dialoges better get those.

When you get heplers, its better if they dont change prefered weapons too often.

Run around beating bandit groups to level up.

Hoard blueprints, books, and ai cores, you need those for research.

Weed smugling from the swamp to the empire is good money.

Getting xbows and kiting things is very efective.

There is a place near were you spawn where there are friendly hivers, there are lots of things you can hunt there and then sell to the hivers.

When you build your base keep it well lit, it will improve the quality of what you make.

Ita good to train your armourers by processing beast skins into leather

In the far northwest there are huge creatures that give you a pearl when you kill them get all your dudes with bakckpaks and kite them. That is good training. Running around with the backpacks full of pearls trains strength and shootingthem trains dexterity. You may need a base with a steady arrow production.

Use the regular arrows. Those are cheaper and when used with the stronger xbow quite effective. There is no need for the heavy bolts.

The guys wering human skin have a machine that removes limbs. This alows you to change your limbs for the cheapest set wich improves your strength training rate. Once you have high strength switch to the best ones.

Therd is a guy who lives in the southwest called the removedster. Kidnaping him and using him as a training dummy is very efective.

Find some rocks outside a town, mine them until inventory full, sell the ore, repeat until you have enough money to hire another dude. Do that again until more dudes. Keep doing it until you have more money, more dudes. Dudes rock.

what to expect