Kenshi - A Sandbox RPG

There was a reddit post on r/kenshi that brings up a really interesting design element, that is lacking or busted in so many other games.

"what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger"

Kenshi is a rare game, in that, you DO, willfully go find targets that kill kick your ass... but not KILL you. to grow in power. It doesn't nail this at every level admittedly. but, its without question, the best parts of the game, are when thats occurring.
Then even goes as far as to subvert itself, with Cannibals, etc. Foes that specifically use clubs, so as to not kill outright, or cut of limbs... but then capture.. putting a timer on rescue.
Dismemberment itself is a huge setback early... but, arguably a buff late game..

So many games, botch this entirely. its, always been a major issue with action arpgs, and roguelikes. games that reward you for winning.. giving you buffs, when you don't need it.

Or, even the "losing is fun" games have the death spirals. where often the game is lost.. and you can't really recover. Kenshi is essentially a "losing is fun" game, with recovery mechanics built in core, and all over the place.

This concept should absolutely be core to most Survival games. learn by doing. and failure, pain and sacrifice is the best teacher.

meanwhile, the wolf is playing with your severed leg in front of you.

also, you do get toughness any time you take damage, even if you win the fight. AND, before damage reduction. so, yeah, equip your best armor. heaviest, slowest, with def penalties, so you can't dodge.. but have max absorbtion. and go fight something. you don't have to lose. ideally you want it to be tough, and deal blunt damage as well.
there are bonuses for losing, for getting up from playing dead, fighting at below 0 health, etc.

well, thats not the same. animals dont get severed limbs, so the bone dogs can't play "limbs" with them.

I tend to fall into very similar habits with this game. I like starting near Squin, then building to the north east at the junction of blood swamp and desert near ninja outpost base. But yeah, you're in for a -rough- time solo; it's best to build up cats to buy everyone that hangs out at the bar (Ruka tends to just show up there a lot, so an easy free companion who can help with bandits early on) and then it's just a process of buying a house to put a training dummy, food container, research bench and then just mine the shit out of copper and iron nearby and keep buying all the food you can get from the bars. Keep adding dudes, get a couple of the merchant's backpacks and dedicate one guy to run back and forth between the miners and the shops to sell the ore, buy food, buy books to research, and repeat. When you have all the basics to making metal and what not, buy stuff to build at least the stone mine and the metal refinery, and then from there it's just work all day/night, fend off bandits (even if you don't have 20 combat skills, it's fine, just make sure you at some point picked up enough materials to make a couple bedrolls/beds to plop down to heal people) and then it's building walls to incorporate some of the blood swamp area and some of the desert (more desert) and start your cactus diet like a champ.

Grow wheat at reduced rates in the desert and get that whole process started because chewsticks only take you so far and then... well, you just defend and build up and make sure you buy schematics and get polearms asap from one of the hive bases so you can fend off the break things and gorillos that will likely attack your base, and make sure one dude is human to tell the holy nation what's up with his book once a week. You might need to pay off the dust bandits a couple of times, but when you can, get the mercenaries from the ninja outpost or squin and use them to murder the bandits when they do attack. Same dude with merchant's backpack runs all the shit you aren't using to sell, buy food to help while crops grow, and so forth and so on. Dedicate someone to forging wakizashis if you have the recipe or find it (typically easy to find) because they craft fast and are light and sell well. Have at least one person train in crossbows and sneak, and get the lockpicking up to at least 5-10 with the lockbox training deal. Set your base on auto and then take the ninja thief out for a jaunt to start collecting ancient books from nearby ruins. Use the crossbow to kite the spiders, which will keep it leveling up fairly quickly, and sneak around threats you can avoid every chance you get.

Use said ninja to run around the world while your base continues to research and improve and you automate the shit out of everything, collect tons of research materials while your blacksmith gets to the point where you have to visit multiple vendors to actually unload your wakizashi stacks, and money is never a thing again. Get someone into armorsmithing so you can start making all the ridiculous ass armor out there (keep buying new schemas using your money which transcends space and time between your base and your ninja) and do the same with robotics because skeletons are awesome. Keep this going until you have everyone outfitted, somewhat trained from constant bandit/black dragon ninja(huuuuge assholes) attacks, clean out all the beak thing nests nearby so you can just run back and forth to the hive villages easily, and then start pissing off the neighbors. Hire mercenaries to guard your base while you send out raiding parties to wipe out dust bandit bases. Do this until you get bored/are swole, then start taking the fight to the holy nation. Piss them off good and well, but funnel them in your base through a mounted xbox enfilade for easy skill gains and lots of shit to sell/replace old gear with. Keep upgrading, the ninja should now be a demigod and just mercing shit before it even gets close, and able to break into anything. Finish all the fun research you want, capture all the world/faction leaders, and then retire as ruler of the world.

Shit do I even need to play this again? I already know what I'm going to do haha.

edit - I will say though, I haven't done all the different starts; usually just the normal start or the 5 dudes looking for a new start, because it just cuts out grinding ore for the first few days and some of the "need other people" stuff. You still do it, but you spend less time on it.

yeah. there are a number of "exploitative" you can do, that kindof make alot of the game trivial. you almost have to force yourself to not do them.

Stealing for example. like, why do the mining runs.. when you can just skill up stealing, and never have to pay for a thing again. its basically totally broken in several ways.
go into a location with REd items, that are not in directly line of sight of the owner. stealth, and pick the item up. zero chance of a failure, and gain skill. put the item down. pick it back up. another skill up. do this repeatedly, until you get about 40-50 skill. this is enough to steal pretty much anything from any chest. Theres a weird thing, where stealing from chests, which have a % failure, based on skill.. gives no skill. While picking up random items on the world map, DOES give skill, and is not related to chance to fail, as there is no chance to fail.
so, you can loot every merchant in the worlds shop. the roofs, 2nd floors, etc with no threat at all. and even the main floors at night, or by using walls, or by using other units to "talk to merchants" making them face the other way.. then of course, when robbing them blind, it can be real silly. robotics repair kits...

This is of course a place where the risk/reward and rewarding failure is not working.

I explored quite a bit in my first game, but didn't explore everywhere. I am running into groups I had never seen before. Bumming around in the southeast part of the map right now.

I got my revenge on the cannibals though. The piles of bodies and severed limbs was impressive.

I have 8 people and a pack bull. 3 Greenlanders, 1 ashlander, 2 shek, 1 Skeleton, 1 beep. Most combat skills in the high 40s to 50s. 2 paladin cross, 2 pole arms, 2 foreign Sabres, 1 Falling sun, 1 martial artist.

Most armor is specialist with a few pieces of masterwork.

The fights down south are no joke still.

Also, skeletons are slow as shit without being able to wear wooden sandals. I found 2 scout legs and decided to remove the skeleton's legs. Putting heavy armor on the torso with no pants and letting some skimmers gnaw on him for a while did the trick. Not having peeler machines yet makes removing skeleton limbs tough.

Had a desperate situation happen in fog islands early on though. I thought I could save some people... nope. Got my entire squad captured. Managed to break some people out. Had to make a run for it to Mongrel. Those that made it had to rest up, but I didn't want to lose anyone. So I hired some mercenaries for a day...

They proved to be a great distraction while I got the rest of my team out... I don't think any of the mercs made it though. Lots of screaming and crunching going on the last I saw. Good thing I only paid for one day.