Questions (unarmed, mercenary donations, dialogue, items)

[Guy]

I play Kenshi sporadically as updates come out and I exhaust their content (still burnt out after losing a pretty large city in the old map).

I came back after a while into this newest update to find myself confused on a basic level and with no place other than here or the steam forums to ask questions.

What's the general consensus on unarmed? I have a relatively decent skeleton soldier with martial arts a little low at ~45 and it seems like the damage output is pretty nice, and the attack speed can be pretty quick too (something you do not often get with blunt weapons). You seem to have no defence other than stunlocking your enemy, but IIRC the skill info says that new moves are learned as you progress in skill so maybe those will help deal with range/attack speed disadvantages. While I understand dodging has yet to be implemented my current thoughts are that aside from roleplaying it's useful for raising toughness (does it raise dexterity a lot as well because you use a "weapon" with no weight?) and if you go on a recruiting binge in hostile territory you can pass your weapons off your martial artists to your rookies so they have a chance at doing damage while your toughened veterans take blows and hopefully help in a brawl. Has anyone come to a different conclusion?

I also noticed that there are way more dialogue interactions for random characters you run into. Some of them are obvious fronts for free or low-cost recruitment, but I started to wonder if there were actual quests hidden in any of the character dialogues. Character dialogues were honestly quite meaningless before, and I hadn't noticed some of the subtleties in the new systems like HN interactions with females vs males thanks to HN trying to lynch my majority skeleton faction on sight. I also paid some mercs 50k to gain influence or something like that. Nothing happened immediately but I noticed that when some fresh recruits got beat to near death along with the initial medics, my combat medics got a random mercenary squad they ran into just following them around as they hauled bodies back to base. Is this the effect of the donation?

I also thought that unique weapons were not really a thing in Kenshi now that you can craft edgewalker grade stuff. I keep hearing about a weapon called "Falling Sun" and how it cannot be crafted. I'm curious about that and am now wondering if there are also armors/armor grades that can't be crafted now that we have so many recipes and quality of armor is based off of skill. I'm also left wondering about AI cores specifically. Is there a random chance for AI cores to spawn at all ancient labs, or just a couple specific ones (like the one on the island in the northwest of the map)?

[Shidan]

1. Unarmed definitely needs the dodge skill. Even with powerful characters, it cannot be used effectively against anyone remotely powerful. Or against more than one maybe two enemies.

2a. No REAL quests or the like. Though it's not impossible to have some that lead you on an adventure of some kind. The main one that comes to mind is a bit of a treasure hunt. Gives a bit of directions and joins your party. He then has some unique dialog when you reach certain landmarks and such, trying to guide you to the treasure. Though you could also easily go get said treasure without him, he's not actually important to it.

2b. Those mercenaries sounds like it might a have been a mod. Should be nothing related to buy influence in the base game. Though you can hire mercenaries to follow you around for a few days, which sounds a lot like what you described later.

3a. Technically, Edgewalker weapons are better than craftable edge weapons are. There is also another manufacturer that makes better weapons than the Edgewalkers. So there are definitely rare legendary weapons in the universe.

3b. Falling Sun is craftable, just not yet. No merchant currently sells the blueprints. There are also some armours not craftable, but not a whole lot as I recall. And not because they superior or anything.

3c. AI Cores only have a chance to spawn in a few specific locations. And currently it's a very low chance.

[Guy]

Ahh okay, also your right about the mod. Those mercs were part of a mod, thanks for catching that too, I would have driven myself nuts trying to search for that in update logs.

[swillo]

Dodge skill is will make martial arts viable. I just started a new game as a monk with no weapon. So far it has been really interesting. I'm only at about 10 MA skill. but I have gone from a punch, to punch and kick techniques. I can usually deal with one or two hungry bandits. But if they get one hit in i'm a goner.

But I have been also training, I filled up a back pack and run back and fourth from Stack to Blister. building up strength, athletics, and toughness when I get jumped by a group of more then 3.
Can't quite handle the dogs yet. But I'm trying to test the unarmed combat to see what new skills I can learn.

And it doesn't increase dexterity when you fight.