Lo-Fi Games

Hi all,

I am having fun with my Kenshi experience so far. The game can be somewhat unforgiving especially if you play on Iron Man. Right now I have a squad of around 12 people. I setup a farming base in the Holy Nation in between the other farms. I have access to several Iron mines and water. I also created two farms. It seemed "safe enough", and close enough to other places to trade. Things were going alright, until the HN started coming by and annoying me. Apparently they don't like my non-human companions very much. I sent a small group mostly comprised of non-humans and my main character to the hub to explore other areas to build a base, maybe the south. My people focused on mining and making a ton of green fruit. I finally researched cooking and started having a ton of food in the food store. Things were looking good, then it all went...crazy.

While I was gone, these Ninja warriors attacked my base. I had the walls almost finished, but they ran through one part that was unfinished. I told most of my farmers to run, but they chased them after looting my base. (I think they were after the food).

I tried to run to the holy nation farmers for help, but they just kinda stood there grinning. I fought of a few of them, but they ended up knocking out 80% of my people, leaving only a few to carry the wounded outside of the base and patch them up.

Here is my question, when should I start building a base? Should I leave the base for now and head back to the hub? Work on getting more numbers and increasing my melee stats, (I think I have around 4-5 people with 20 - 30 melee attack.) (The people that attacked me were much stronger).

Should I research better walls and turrets? Also is there any way to ally with the Holy Nation? If I am allied with them will they stop annoying my non-human companions?

I am debating going back and finishing the walls, I have two gates and a large circular compound, but will the enemy find a way through them? Any advice would be appreciated it. I spent a lot of time and resources building the base, but if the Holy Nation won't help during raids, my non-human companions keep getting harassed, and raids keep happening...I may look for greener pastures. Let me know what you think, and when you start building a base. (Specifically how many people do you need, what research do you need, and what do you look for in base building).

FYI, I have not researched turrets yet. I have only basic makeshift walls and a gate. Most of my people are equipped well, but only a few are fighters. The main fighters are the non-humans, but they were away from the settlement at the time.

I love how a story this good is a problem.

You definitely need turrets. And a big gate. I like to put my turrets on a pair of watchtowers, and have the gate 'indented' between them. Bigger walls can cause problems due to NPCs occasionally getting stuck on top of them if you walls make too sharp of an angle, actually. Since I don't need them for turrets I still find myself building a ramp to rescue those NPCs. Or shoot them with turrets.
You could also hire mercenaries for base protection. They are fairly tough, any waystation would have multiple squads for hire. Any city will have some as well.

You could ally yourself with the Holy Nation. (But they dicks and you know it and I think you'll understand if I then lose some respect towards you ) They would certainly stop sending assaults against your base, but racism is in their blood. And just you wait 'till one of you characters loses a limb and gets a robotic replacement. Ha.
To quickly become their ally you could go find the Flotsam Ninjas and do the necessaries. Caution though - the ninjas would become your enemy. You could kidnap Moll and bring her to the HN - in that case the ninja retribution might be delayed.
I don't think one can divided their squad into fighters/non-fighters over the longterm. There are base assaults, and one day you might decide to go on the offensive yourself, or at least go explore the ruins, workshops, etc. Take down the Bugmaster perhaps - very fulfilling, I highly recommend it.

Okran's Pride is fertile, with iron, and squat for copper.
I like having a base camp on the edge of the swamp. Half the farms in arid Borderlands, half in the swamp, per example, making dustwiches and cloths, med kits, hashish maybe. Swamp is one of few regions with 100 in copper quality - which is much needed for higher tech. Speaking of which - I have my doubts whether your alliance with the Holy Nation would overshadow their hate for high level tech.

Hey there,

I was in the exact same position as you were (i.e. trying to find my way around) a couple of weeks ago. Here's what worked for me.

I started building a base once I finished all the research that can be done with the small research bench. Mostly because I thought that I couldn't fit the bigger one into my house in Squin. Turned out that I can indeed fit it in there. But it was good timing nevertheless. You have all the basic tech down for mining, farming, crafting and base building and your team should be able to deal with the local roaming parties of Dust and hungry bandits..

I think the WHERE is more important than the WHEN though. For me, I settled right here:

https://imgur.com/a/n6lj0va

The spot has pretty much everything. You are close to Squin, the Hub, a Waystation, the Hive and Admag for all the trading you'd want. You can hire mercenaries. You have three iron nodes (one big, two small) and two copper nodes. All the fertility, stone and wind that you need. Plenty of flat ground. 100% arid and 10% green vegetation. But the best thing: you don't have to deal with anything outrageous in terms of raids or taxes.

The Shek will knock at your door to ask you for your food tribute, but you can just turn them down, get stomped and they'll leave you alone from then on. At least that's what they did to me. I paid them a couple of times (though you can cheese that by just emptying your food storage the moment they arrive) and when I didn't want to any more, I told them I don't want to. They came back with a small raiding party that I flattened without losing any standing with the Shek (just don't loot them). Then they sent the big party which flattened me. After that they never came back and 90% of the attacks that I have to deal with are from Dust and hungry bandits. Nothing my farmers can't take care of by themselves.

Rarely you get one of those base raids that are announced by a little text, but those are telegraphed beforehand and not very strong. In the beginning you can hire mercenaries for a day or two and that'll be enough for those. Once you have proper gear (i.e. specialist), your farmers should be able to handle them on their own as well. If everything goes bad, you can retreat to Squin and heal up before you retake your base (or the baddies just leave by themselves).

And that's it. The rest of the time you don't have to worry about anything and can just sit there and grow fat.

I wouldn't even bother with a lot of turrets/static defence. Your people need quite some time to become proficient with them and they could instead spend that time straight up fighting their enemies which would train them just as much. And, more importantly, doesn't need any micromanaging. Your turrets need to be manned, are useless once your gate is breached and are static. If you want to focus on your gang of adventurers you much rather want your farmers on automated self defence (i.e. equipped somewhat properly and then just automatically fighting whatever wanders through your open gates) instead of having to micromanage your turrets and gates.

Five people with their combat stats in the 20s is perfectly fine for settling in the above mentioned location. You might want them to stick around for the first few events/fights, but once you levelled up your smiths to produce reasonable gear and expanded your roster, you can start to go on adventures.

I''m currently in the endgame where my combat squad is 14 people strong, everybody carries Edge 3 and specialist/masterwork gear and my base is completely self-sufficient. I still have those shitty looking tier 1 walls, a few mounted crossbow thingies from way back and a gate that's basically made out of cardboard. More for nostalgic reasons than for anything else.

Edit: How do I embed images?

As long as you have non humans in your squads the HN will never truly be your ally. Even if you court them to that level they will still attack non humans and anyone with robotic limbs on sight regardless.

I always get crossbows up as fast as possible. my basic wall and gate design is a U shape with 8 to 16 turrets looking down on the gate. start with crossbows and by the time you upgrade them nothing short of a Wrath of god raid will breach your gate. You can have your farmers set to tend fields and the man turrets when they are not working the fields. They will quickly increase their turret ability and will soon be doing 200 damage with every shot. I have bases in cannibal lands and the shrieking forest, where you face multiple groups of 20 to 30 attacking your gates at once, but with good gate and turret placement I just stack them up on the steps like cord wood. The pile can get so deep only the heads of the ones standing are visible.

I used to use two gates, but dropped to just one so I can concentrate my defense in one location.

As far as location for your first base I would suggest some where near the hub or the HN lands. You can deal peacefully with most the raids that come but it will cost you. As was mentioned in other posts don't underestimate the value of hiring mercs to help guard your base in the beginning. And also think of it as your FIRST base. when you are strong enough and have sufficient tech there are lots of better places to build as base that are more interesting and better resourced. If you want a really peaceful place then I will divulge the best location on the map. Head west through the vain all the way to the coast due west of the southern most hive village on the river. in the wash between the to hills. Building there you will rarely see a raid, and it will never be more then a few scrawny cannibals. Mostly it's gorillos and wandering gutters that pass by and provide you free food and skins. It rains and keeps your crops watered. You can plant anything but cactus and it grows great. You can fish if you have the mod. The only thing you need is iron and you can trade the hive village for that easy enough. They love rum. It's a little out of the way but if you want peace and quite I have not seen a better place.

Another base design that I found very interesting is to have the gate facing water. Make your attackers swim to it. Slowing them down give you plenty of time to pepper them with bolts. It can be annoying to have your own people have to swim to and from your gate, but they get good at it quickly. The worst part is they have to swim though all those floating dead bodies.

This is all excellent advice. Thank you all!

And if legitimate solutions fail, you can always try to break the ai by building a fake base next to your real one, or just place a few lone gates some distance away so raids don't trigger properly. XD

Or if all else fails save-teleport your people to safety and just start a new base elsewhere, its not like bases cost anything really and you'll want a few of them spread all over the map anyway.

My own FYI on this for anyone that comes along:

There is no rush to build a base, do not hurry to it like it HAS TO BE DONE ASAP.
You can find a town that has copper near enough by and a decent enough price on electronic components ( or some other low tier crafted item). Then just do research, keep earning money, and stock piling base construction materials for however long you want. There is no ticking time clock to beat, no mechanical need to have some minimum base amount by some moment in time.

It is way easier to get all the research you can get done on basic books alone, while you are not having to protect that researcher from death, because you're doing this in your own base that will be under regular attack. Doing that is just going to be more resource costly to get each step of the research done, becasue you will be attacked, and some people likely get hurt and need to recover soon, because there is almost for sure going to be another attack eventually, and you'll need your crew in fighting shape when that happens.
So either early on while you're a smaller group you just are even smaller for the researcher not fighting. Or the researcher is fighting and so can't be researching while resting in between fights.
In the end making each of those research steps done in your own base, take longer and cost more in resources to reach. Than if you just do this portion of the tech tree all while still in an NPC town, before you head out to start a base of your own.

Why need to research cactus farming after you build a base, when you can show up ready to plant cactus already?
And in fact already have a stock pile of it to build the first couple plots of whatever too.

Eventually you hit a wall of needing to get some advanced research items for the rest of the tech. This is the stage at which i find it is most rational to start figuring out where to lay my claim on some land. Cause this is all the basic buildings and stuff you need to actually have a base. Walls, defenses, food production, and the raw materials refining needing to build most of it, not all "building materials" still have to be bought. But until you can just start building most that stuff, you're not really gonna have a base, you're still in the middle of researching the things you need to be building to have a useful base.


So my take on the base planning in summary:

Pick an NPC town and work out of it first. Save up until you're in a good position to make a potential go of it (also save before you leave to go build it, you might pick a bad spot).

Do all the research you can on only basic research books before you head out to start a base(the stop wall is in tech bench III stuff).
When you do head out, already have a good stock pile of food, base making materials, and money.
Plan that you can just live off your food stocks while you build all the defenses first. And the pool of cash is mostly to draw on as the stop gap measure. In case you don't estimate the right amount of food or building materials, or maybe need to pay some mercs or pay off thug gangs while you're still early in the development of your base, also if you're in a tax zone you'll need some cash on hand.

Bonus: I think a pack animal or two is well worth it for the initial hauling of all the base stuffs to my chosen location once I do head out.