That was my thinking too but I cannot see any consistent pattern. I found some ruins that had 5 green items in a slew of dark and light brown items. Two of them were very good 25000 + weapons, one was ok and two were meh, as in a pair of samurai boots of low quality. The red ones are as you described.
I finally got my base up and running but holy crap what a comedy of errors - backward gates, bad angles preventing turret placement, etc. That’s why my map now proudly displays Fort Fiasco. The special cherry on top was a huge swamp raptor ‘invasion’ right before the final wall pieces were put up. In hindsight, I should have put everyone on passive and just let them eat, but I had mercs and they only just barely defeated them (I had to help.) Everyone at the end was wounded or limping.
But it’s done! And I’m now producing Cactus Rum. Yum. Haven’t decided if I’m going to open a storefront in my extra house or just vendor it. Sell price is north of 1k, and it’s easy to produce. I can also grow rice and hemp, but weirdly I’m having problems finding human and/or hive workers to be farmers and cooks.
I have to say though the occasional bandit raids leave behind a bloody mess, even with a corpse furnace. At one point my bone dog flipped out running all over creation - come to find out, he was “playing limb.” Fun world. I also have my first official prisoner, a lone swamp ninja. Not sure why she attacked by herself or what I’m going to do with her. Practice I guess.
I was wondering if it was possible to create a store front. I set up a shop counter and made my house public, but have not witnessed any customer transactions. I don’t think there’s a way to automate this or other means of making or converting to cash.
[edit]
It seems player owned shops are bugged.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/233860/discussions/0/1692659135900332833/
I have spent the last 3 days on Kenshi.
The only way I can describe may make sense to an old WoW player. Imagine you created a level 1 character and were instantly dropped into the Western Plaguelands on a PvP server and you had to make a home there. The only other available zone is the Eastern Plaguelands. This is Kenshi.
From a game play standpoint there is a lot of running and waiting. An hour of boredom watching the bar slowly creep up while mining, trying to explore the landscape attempting to find anything at all (the map is huge…and sparsely populated) punctuated by brief periods of abject terror running from people who want to kill you and things that can devour your innards. At the same time, every character point and every new person in your party seems like a triumph. You are always looking over your shoulder and that feels exactly like I was back in STV on a PvP server in WoW.
There are no quests. There is no story. There is just the world and what you make of it. For instance:
Darrow awoke broke and alone. Having fled bandits who destroyed his family home, he found himself in the broken-down Hub with little food and few chances of lasting a week. He found a copper vein nearby and started to work. Slowly by surely he built his wealth and his body. He could afford to eat. He found Mustang, another destitute wanderer down on her luck and asked her to join. She did so once Darrow paid her owners 3k. He rescued Sevro from slavers who joined willingly. He also acquired Roque in the bar of a nearby town.
Darrow was raised at the bottom of the rung so he held no prejudices. When a Shek named Cats wanted to join he let her do so without hesitation.3 other Shek soon joined and they even had enough money to buy a pack animal they nicknamed Augustus. They scraped together a few materials and decided to build a home together. Hearing about a tranquil valley nearby, Darrow and his team of Reds went to the lands of Okran’s Pride. Darrow had not been a follower of the religion but he had always heard good things about The Holy Nation.
He was quickly stopped at the border and Okran guards questioned him about his “monsters”, the Shek in his party. Darrow insisted they were loyal followers of his and they were allowed to pass. They made it to a crest in the river valley and started to set up a tranquil camp. A couple of raids kept things interesting but the camp progressed nicely. A few passing Okran patrols also asked about the Shek but all left satisfied. Darrow started to think about settling down with Mustang and making a quiet life there. They had their first crop coming out of the fields when devastating news made Darrow’s blood run cold…Okran’s guard was coming to burn down his camp and remove the abominations. Darrow knew that even with walls his camp could not survive an assault by Okran’s best and they had no walls yet. They did the only thing they could. They gathered what little they could and ran. They had just made it to the bridge when Okram’s legion came and swarmed the camp, only to find it empty. Darrow led his little band back towards The Hub, avoiding bandits and even carrying Sevro on his back after one battle. They barely made it, starving, injured and having lost most of their resources.
Darrow bought food and shelter for his band by bribing the Shinobi Thieves and swore revenge on Okran’s legions. He would rebuild again.
And that is where I am right now. I actually have built up my stocks again and have more food than ever. We are still few in numbers and relatively weak in skill. We can now fend off most bandit raids but I need at least 10 more people and am struggling to find any. There are not any even in bars except the 3k ones that have zero skills. Hints on that would be appreciated.
Gentle reader, I put it to you to help write the next chapter of this story. Should I:
1. Build a base in the arid Border Zones and start raiding the Holy Lands?
2. Make a journey East, skirting the northern edge of Shem and then pray I can make it across Venge to settle in the Stormgap Coast?
3. Make a journey North through Holy territory to Bast and to a different major power?
4. Make a suicidal journey to try to settle the Leviathan Coast?
Just curious, with a game like this, how do you know when you’ve finished the game? Is there some sort of end-goal?
Nope.
Leviathan coast! Leviathan Coast!
Great story @Granath, keep us posted!
My base so far has been relatively quiet, with the Black Dragon Ninjas the only serious threat with two attempted raids. They didn’t fare well against the harpoon though. We found their tower and plan on taking them out for revenge. First things first though:
Dawn breaks over Fort Fiasco as the excursion party prepares a journey to The Grid:
(We decided to leave the pack bull behind although he usually accompanies the team.)
…
After a successful foray to the Grid, on the way home the crew decides to take a detour through the Swamp.
Fought off several bands of Red Swamp ninjas, and found a ruin - behind a locked door a pack of blood spiders awaits. Decisions, decisions…
…
There’s still a ton of map for me to explore; I’ve slowly increased discovery, usually by sounding out my ‘main’ character first to scout, and then a party to follow. My away team is only five guys plus a doctor (he doesn’t fight.) The lands away from the Border Zones are perilous though and we’re gonna need to train up some more fighters. I keep three decent ones behind for base protection (and mercs, but they don’t always show up when I hire them.)
Really digging this game, even though there are some really weird bugs - hey engineer build a spotlight here. "OK! First let me open the fort door and put away some inventory and stand next to the food barrel and then maybe I’ll think about it (weeks later he builds it.) Once after forgetting to close the fort gate a lone kamikaze hungry bandit decided to attack Beep. The bandit ended up comatose in the middle of my wheat fields; I asked one of the farmers to “throw the intruder” out. Only instead she tossed the victim a mile into the air, but the fall still doesn’t do him in. Much later, that same farmer starts racing … somewhere … and her status reads “Throwing out intruder.” God only knows.)
LOL. It’s hilarious to watch limbs flying dozens of yards for whatever reason.
Also, your graphics look better than mine. :(
There is a mod that can help cut down on the level up grind (it is still a grind, but much less so).
Advanced training dummies:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771745662
You can train up toughness / attack / defense / etc… directly.
For me, I made a start where I mined by day and was a theif by night. Stealing stuff is mad cash.
Start off by sneaking around. Just move around and as long as you are not spotted, and there are npcs in the area, you will gain steal xp.
For lockpicking, I went to that town south of the hub and just worked on lock picking doors. Keep an eye out for patrols.
Once you are somewhat stealthy and can unlock shop doors, only steal stuff that are on counters. This will raise your thief skill and will not raise an alarm. Unfortunately this stuff does not respawn. Once you have a decent thief skill, you can start to loot containers, you can see your chance to steal items in the UI when you hover over the item in question.
IF your caught, its not game over. You can try and sneak out into the darkness, the NPC has to see you to identify you, so you can still get away. At worst, you may spend some jail time depending on your bounty level.
I got flagged a few times at first, but now I just can rob stores blind, sometimes even in broad daylight.
Another hint, just after the 0:00 hour, the shop guards tend to go to bed, so wait till like 0:30 and they may be gone. Your steal chance goes way up if there are no npcs in the area.
As much as I would like to, I doubt I could survive the journey never mind deal with any enemies there. I can not even handle one Beak Thing.
The trip there is fun! Especially having to avoid all the cannibals on the way.
The Leviathans themselves arent usually hostile and it’s a cool place.
I have no idea how powerful cannibals are but since we do fairly well in holding our own against bandits I figure we might be okay. I am more worried about running into a herd of Beak Things or spiders. I have seen what packs of these can do to troops that are better equipped and experienced than my own.
Bandits are really weak, i think their stats go from 5 to 20 tops, they have no gear besides a club (which is bad since blunt damage takes longer ro recover from what i recall) And they come in mass groups of around 20+ i think.
So they kind of wear you down and eat you if you are not careful.
I go to The Swamp a lot to sell Cactus Rum (130% markup) and always run the spiders to town (once I barely made it and nearly lost everyone.) I’ve chanced against single ones and my main fighter kills them it with one swing. However there are so many they just swarm you. In those ruins I found with a pack of them behind a door, as luck would have it a bunch of NPCs ran up and started breaking the door down. I hid behind a ramp while they did their thing - and the spiders summarily dispatched them in a matter of moments. It was a harrowing run to Shark from there.
Just recently I trekked over to a Hive village to get a Hive shirt blue print and the village was crawling with beak things. On the way out two chased me and easily overtook me despite 80 athletics. However somehow they missed and I managed to retreat back to the village and waited from them to pass. I have managed to kill a single wounded one but my understanding the way to take them on his have one guy tank them and have everyone else use range. My problem is I don’t have any decent ranged troops (working on fixing that now.)
Spoiler for a good base location I found:
Summary
Northwest of World’s End in the zone called Hidden Valley, there is 100% green biome. Didn’t see any dangerous foes, if/when I start another game I think I’m going to plan a settlement there. The only other area that offers that is HN, and well we know how they feel about everyone but male greenlanders.
Where in the bloody heck is that? I do not recognize any of those zones.
Went up to the Hidden Forest to see what that was like. I love that zone. Great defensible positions, lots of water, iron nodes, beautiful…and not a lick of fertility. Bugger me.
Finding a decent base location in this game is like pulling teeth. I went up to Hidden Forest and there is not a damn thing in that zone.
I have found 4 but all have their drawbacks:
- The area commonly known as Rainbow Point, just on the edge of the Border Zone and Vain. Drawbacks are defense and lack of copper unless I make the city walls huge.
- A place I am calling Minis Tirith, which is a rock overlook just on the edge of Okran’s Pride. Incredible defensive position, there is a lack of good farmland and space up there. It would be ideal for raids into the Holy Lands.
- There is a decent place between The Hub and Squin. Just take the road N out of Squin and soon you will come to a place where the road diverts 3 ways. It checks out but I feel settling here would end up being quite dull. But at least one side and some of another is well protected via cliffs.
- The well known area between Border Zone and The Swamp where you get a mix of both biomes. It is terrible for defense though.
Anyone have any other ideas?
Shem, that zone.
Low amounts of mobs to deal with, only desert bandits as regular raiders, 100% arid fert, 10% green fert, lots of iron and copper, and not too far from several cities.
Sorry about that. I could have sworn it was fertile (I didn’t have my scientist with me but used the build option to check for farm availability.)
I spent hours and hours looking for a base location, but I settled on the Border Zone\Swamp. No really strong enemies to face and despite having two gates they only ever attack one of them. (I have a mod that increases gate strength though.) I hired mercs (guard base option, not bodyguard) for 8 days while I put up the walls and it was cheap (I still hire them when I go on extended exploration trips with my main fighters.) I did have troubles with the hills and gullies and had to redo sections of the wall (I still want to redo it, I might yet.) It’s super fertile though, I can’t keep up processing all the crops.
Shem has beak things - not the numbers in Vain but they’re there. It’s a scenic zone though and the numerous lakes or cliffs will help with defense (and once your walls are up you’ll only need to worry about beak things when leaving :P )
This guy found a really good spot (end of the video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18wLxJo9LpI&feature=youtu.be)