1-1: From Rock Bottom

Everyone has a story. In the chaotic, violent world of Kenshi, these stories aren't always long, and they sure as hell aren't always happy, but they aren't predictable either. A story could begin with anyone from lone wanderer to a pair of slaves, from a gang of six with outsized ambitions to a scavenger who stole a holy sword. A player can choose between 13 such beginnings. Our story will begin with someone Lady Luck has chewed up and not quite got around to spitting back out yet, someone who can only hope their life can't get any worse because the alternative is just too damn sad to consider.

The main menu screen, displaying info for the game start we will be using. Behind the box for said game start is some nice splash art of a desert with a mysterious person in a tattered cloak in the bottom left, walking past a person-sized metal building with cloth wrapped around the roof and some sort of round symbol taking up the upper half of the door. A shrine, perhaps.

Rock Bottom

Difficulty: Very Hard
Cash: c.0
Play Style: RPG

You've hit absolute rock bottom. You're alone, unarmed, naked and hungry, lost in the middle of a harsh desert teeming with slavers, and you just lost an arm. Good luck.

Clicking Begin brings us directly to the character creator to meet our luckless loner.

Our starting character, Jam. Jam is a long-legged hive soldier drone. Like all hivers, hive soldiers are insect-like humanoids with leathery, pale green skin. They have a relatively humanoid chest that gives way to skin stretched tightly over a visible ribcage, then a very thin abdomen as if all their organs were directly in front of their spine. Their legs connect to either side of their lower abdomen as if by diagonal shafts, with the tops of their legs jutting upward to give them the appearance of wide hips. Their legs narrow down into thin sticks below the knees. They have no feet. The one feature unique to hive soldiers that makes them visually distinct from other hivers is the shape of their head. It is oblong like that of a hammerhead shark, with one beady black eye on either side. They have a single antenna that emerges from the back of their head and points directly backward, and a stubby knob on each side around where a human's ears might be. The character creator calls them horns but they seem to be covered with skin. Finally, since we are using the Rock Bottom game start, Jam is missing their left arm.

Meet Jam! They're a hive soldier drone who's left their hive. Hivers are one of the four playable "races" in Kenshi, insect-like people who come in three varieties: Soldier drones, worker drones, and princes. They live together in hive villages, all fulfilling their respective roles in service of their queen, whose pheremones ensure everything they do is in service of her.

Soldier drones are created to protect their Hive and enforce control over the workers. Stronger and less intelligent than a worker, freedom-seekers are rarer and usually end up finding mercenary work.

Sometimes, a hiver breaks from their queen's pheremone control, whether through an act of will, by chance, or by getting the boot. That's how you get people like Jam making their way in the world.

In terms of game mechanics, hive soldier drones are differentiated from other sorts of people by how durable they are (about average), how much they need to eat (very little), and by a list of bonuses and penalties to how fast they level up certain stats. Hive soldiers get bonuses to leveling Toughness and Melee Attack, and penalties to Perception, Farming, First Aid, Armour Smithing, Weapon Smithing, Robotics, Cooking, Science, and Engineering. That's a lot of penalties and not a lot of bonuses! It's tough to be a hiver! This is largely a game about fighting, though, and those Toughness and Melee Attack bonuses will go a long way. The various penalties will discourage Jam from pursuing a few skills but all in all they'll get by.

For the record, the other three playable "races" in Kenshi are: Humans, shek, and skeletons. We'll meet them soon enough.

Jam stands alone in the middle of the trackless desert. Dunes stretch into the horizon.

The game doesn't start with a cutscene or any kind of intro text, it just dumps Jam's ass in the desert. We get exactly what we signed up for—Jam is in fact alone, unarmed, naked, hungry, and missing an arm. They only have two things going for them: The fact that they aren't currently bleeding, and the fact that they do actually have some notion of where they are. That is to say: Jam has a map.

Kenshi's map, zoomed out to show the entire continent the game takes place in. Many kinds of landscapes can be seen. Jam is in the northeastern corner of the world, where 4 nearby cities are marked on the map.

Right off the bat, we get to see the entire world. Looking at the map like this kind of undersells how vast it is—the Great Desert alone, where Jam currently is, is huge. None of it's filled in apart from where Jam is right now, so we'll just have to explore! The world is harsh and dangerous, though, so it's best to start off going to one of the cities nearby. Cities aren't without their own dangers, but at the very least, we'll be able to find food there. Let's zoom in and get a better look at our immediate surroundings.

The map zoomed in to show the names of the 4 cities around Jam. Nearest, west-northwest, is Sho-Battai. Further away, northeast on the coast, is Bark. Heft is to the southwest and Stoat is to the southeast in what looks like a slightly different desert area.

Four whole cities marked on our map is pretty nice! These all belong to a faction called the United Cities. They're one of the big three factions in this world. Whatever Jam may come to think of them, they're stuck in UC territory either way, so without a compelling reason to visit one city over another, they head to the closest: Sho-Battai.

Jam running, still naked, toward a city on the horizon. The air ahead is full of dust.

Jam walks west for a while and eventually Sho-Battai crests the horizon. It's a little hard to get a good look at on account of the raging dust storm, but it's there.

Dust storms are one of several types of weather that will affect player characters. As the tooltip states, dust storms heap on pretty significant penalties to combat accuracy unless you're wearing clothing to protect yourself. That's honestly just fine for Jam at the moment—they're in no state to be fighting anything anyway, so if other people have a harder time hitting them, that's just gravy.

On that note, Jam spots a small encampment of people on their way to Sho-Battai. Perhaps they'll be friendly? Is Jam's luck about to turn around?

A group of people in tank tops and conical straw hats camp under a shabby shelter. A few of them have started running after Jam. One shouts at them.

Outlaw Farmer: I'm pissed off, I'm hungry, and you, my friend, are in the wrong place at the wrong time!

No.

These guys belong to a faction called Rebel Farmers. They're one of many factions that will generally attack player characters on sight. They're not the most aggressive, though. You generally have to get pretty close before they decide to attack, but Jam did in fact walk right up to them.

Now Jam has no choice but to run away. These guys are even hungrier than Jam and pretty weak in the grand scheme of things, but Jam is weaker. Jam could not take one of these guys let alone 16 of them. They take some hits as they're fleeing, but thankfully, they spot a way out of this pickle.

1-2: CITY IN THE SANDS ⮞